


Terminal Frost

by thegraytigress



Series: Heart of the Storm [3]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Angst, Drama, Established Relationship, F/M, Hurt Bucky Barnes, Hurt Natasha Romanov, Hurt Steve Rogers, Protective Natasha Romanov, Romance
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-08
Updated: 2014-12-10
Packaged: 2018-02-12 06:41:34
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 18
Words: 180,451
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2099448
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thegraytigress/pseuds/thegraytigress
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Their world is coming apart all around them. Steve and Natasha struggle to hold onto themselves and each other as everything they thought they knew turns out to be a lie and everyone they thought they could trust betrays them. And as devastating as that is, it's nothing compared to the past coming back to shatter their future.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> **DISCLAIMER:** _Captain America: The First Avenger, Captain America: The Winter Soldier,_ and _The Avengers_ are the properties of Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Studios, and Marvel Studios. This work was created purely for enjoyment. No money was made, and no infringement was intended.
> 
>  **RATING:** M (for language, violence, adult situations, depictions of torture)
> 
>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** This is the sequel to "Red Rain". It's a direct continuation that runs through _The Winter Soldier_. You do not have to read "Red Rain" to follow along, but it probably wouldn't hurt. This is an AU version of _The Winter Soldier_ ; some of the major plot elements are going to reappear in this story, but it's not going to be a retelling. _The Winter Soldier_ was just awesome the way it was, and I couldn't do it better. This is more like an exploration of what could have happened had Steve and Natasha been together with some other minor (and major) changes along the way. And where "Red Rain" focused a lot on Steve taking care of and being strong for Natasha, this is going to be the other way around.
> 
> So, just in case you didn't catch it: this is strong, established Steve/Natasha with hints of past Steve/Peggy and Clint/Natasha. Also, Clint, Sam, and Tony will play major roles in support. Lots of angst, injury, darkness… My usual. Please read and enjoy!

Natasha knew she was sleeping in too late.  It was that sort of hazy feeling that the day was wasting away, that responsibilities were being shirked, that she had things to do which she really should be doing.  But she was too exhausted and too warm to care, so she ignored the sun streaming through the bedroom windows and the sounds of birds and people and DC bustling outside the comforting veil of a well-deserved rest.  She heard something buzzing.  She lazily cracked open one eye, nuzzling deeper into a pillow that smelled like Steve, and pulled the comforter up over herself.  It was her phone vibrating on the nightstand beside the bed.  Once.  Twice.  A bunch of times.  Groaning she reached for it.

She rolled over in bed, blearily blinking a few times to chase away the remnants of sleep before focusing on the screen.  It was 7:33 in the morning, and a bunch of SHIELD emails was flooding her inbox.  And a few text messages.  The most recent was from Steve.  _“Went for a run,”_ it said.  _“Be back later.  Don’t get up.”_

“No problem, Rogers,” she groaned.  She shoved her phone back on the nightstand with a clatter.  The sun was too bright, so she pulled the blue blanket up and over her head and burrowed back down beneath it.  She’d arrived late last night after her most recent mission, stumbling in like a zombie and positively bone-weary.  Originally she had been due back in the morning, so getting home a few hours earlier had been a welcomed change.  After fumbling with the lock, she’d staggered inside Steve’s apartment, stripping off her sidearm and her uniform and her boots as she’d gone.  She’d somehow found a well-worn pair of her pajama pants and a tank in the middle drawer of his dresser and put them on in a clumsy show that she’d been too tired to be grateful that no one saw.  Then she’d collapsed into bed beside Steve, wrapping her arms around his chest and kissing his shoulder and moving as close to his warmth as possible.  He’d slid a hand along her arm, mumbling something about her being back early.  She’d mumbled some sort of answer in return, and that was her last memory of the night before.  She’d been awake for nearly thirty-six hours prior to returning to DC, and the strain and adrenaline and effort of another rushed operation on behalf of SHIELD was driving her back down to sleep again.

She vaguely heard the shower running sometime after that.  More rustling and the soft sounds of bare feet on hardwood floors.  Later on, the smell of coffee and cooking bacon dragged her back from nothingness, and she opened her eyes again.  The day was even brighter, and her stomach was rudely protesting its emptiness.  She rubbed her eyes few times before glancing at the digital clock on the nightstand.  It was well past ten o’clock now.  She laid there for another couple of minutes, the fog in her mind slow to recede.  The desire to go back to sleep was strong, but Steve’s side of the bed was empty and had long ago grown cold.  That was enough of an incentive for her to drag herself up and get moving.

Natasha stretched, wincing as the motion popped and rotated a few joints that were stiff from mistreatment during the mission.  She stood, sweeping her hair from her face, and headed down the short hallway to the main living area of the apartment.  She followed her nose to the kitchen on soft footfalls.

Steve stood at the stove, handling a couple different pans at once as he made breakfast.  He turned as she entered.  Even if she was silent, it was nearly impossible to sneak up on a super soldier.  “Mornin’,” he said.  “You hungry?”

That question was so stupid coming from him that she almost couldn’t believe (yet again) how they’d gotten to this state.  This… _domestic bliss_ , she guessed it was called.  It had been almost two months since their disastrous mission into Crimea.  She and Steve had been sent by SHIELD to attempt to ascertain information about a Russian super soldier program only to find the product of said program, the Red Guardian, was already a threat to the world.  Worse, the head of the operation, a man named General Yuri Brushov, had nearly dragged Natasha back into the dark world of her past.  Brushov had been the man to take her as a young girl from the streets of Stalingrad and enroll her into his Red Room, the place where he had twisted and tortured and _made_ her into one of the world’s deadliest assassins.  Their mission had turned out to be a trap, a ploy Brushov had orchestrated to bring Captain America into Crimea to fight his Red Guardian.  He’d also captured Natasha and injected her with his newly developed insanity serum to pull her back under his control.  This serum flooded those subjected to it with rage, hysteria, and aggression to the point where rational thought and restraint were all but impossible.  Simply put, it had turned men into monsters, the Red Guardian included.  Things had quickly spiraled out of control at that point.  Though Steve defeated the Red Guardian and put a stop to Brushov’s plans to sell his insanity serum to the evil regimes of the world, he’d been seriously hurt in the process.

 _You still can’t make yourself accept it._   The sour thought drifted uneasily about her mind as it did every time she strayed back to the horrific nightmare from which they’d so barely escaped.  Steve hadn’t just been hurt, though that had been bad enough.  Enraged beyond control, the Red Guardian had devastated Captain America, crushing bones and causing massive internal injuries and literally breaking his back.  But that hadn’t been the worst of it.

No, the worst had been Natasha shooting him in the heart.

Even now, when the trauma was beginning to be a distant memory, she couldn’t tolerate thinking about it too deeply.  They’d been partners for almost a year before Director Fury had deployed them to Crimea on this seemingly simple mission of gathering intelligence on the Russian super soldier program.  But one night of weakness and passion and vulnerability had changed all that.  Natasha had been so compromised, so lost in the horrors of her past, that she’d utterly abandoned her restraint and had finally taken what she’d wanted.  In the back of her heart, she’d long accepted that Steve meant more to her than her partner, captain, and friend, but on that night in Yalta, she’d lost her control.  And then she’d been taken captive by her old enemies.  That serum they’d forced into her body had burned away everything but her anger, her lust, and her possessiveness.  Madness.  She couldn’t stand to remember it, to think back on those awful moments and the haze of pain and anguish after it.  What had happened on that mission had undoubtedly been the darkest horror of her life, and considering who she was and from where she’d come, that was saying a lot.  She wasn’t ever going back.  She was with Steve now.

He’d recovered, but it hadn’t been easy.  It had been his strength and determination and faith in her and himself that had carried him every arduous step of the way.  He was still grounded more than a month after walking out of the medical ward in the Triskelion, and that was saying something about how close he’d come to dying, how very nearly she’d lost him.  But she hadn’t.  And he’d forgiven her.  Since then, since she’d removed her cold masks and uncaring attitude, they’d grown even closer.  They were friends and lovers and everything in between.  She’d practically moved into his apartment, though the topic had never been decided upon or even formally discussed.  She abandoned her hesitations, her hard-set and defensive boundaries, her dislike of weakness and openness.  She’d at long last admitted to herself that this was right, that this was what she wanted and where she belonged.  For so long she’d promised herself to only be his friend, and while she was relieved that she no longer had to keep her distance and pretend (both for him and herself) that she didn’t want more, she realized now that without that year of learning to trust each other, their relationship wouldn’t be what it was.  She had overcome her fear of feeling, of _loving_ , that Brushov and his evil had for years driven into her mind, body, and soul.  Steve was the reason she was able to finally let go of her past and embrace her future.   He was tender with her, tender and patient and caring.  He was a good listener, though she’d never imagined she could value such a thing in another person.  She’d lived a life of control, a life defined by lies, sex, and murder but most of all power.  He was helping her dismantle that a piece at a time.  He had been for so long, and he’d never even known it.  He was strong and calm and confident.  He never pushed, steadfast and silent as he reminded her with warm eyes and kind smiles that this was behind her.  _All_ of it.  Brushov and the Red Room.  The atrocities committed by and against her.  Black Widow’s crimes, even the most recent ones.  It was all over, and this was her new life.  He was her new world.

She was starting to think it was all some sort of dream.  It couldn’t be real, because she was too dark and tainted and unworthy to have a second chance like this.  Even as a SHIELD agent, she’d never been able to completely let go of her past, to heal like she was doing now.  She’d never felt this certain of who she was underneath all her lies and covers and manipulations.  He made her feel sure of herself, that she really could be a force for good.  If he could love her, if _Captain America_ , the very embodiment of valor and strength and heroism, could love _her_ , then there was good in her.

And she’d never been in love before.  Not like this.  Not with a man like him.  This was true love, deep love, not the fake affection and attraction she used to so easily muster for her marks and the men she’d needed to manipulate.  It was raw and open and powerful.  It still frightened her at times.  She’d let him into her heart, the only person who she ever had trusted like that, and he’d completely redefined it.  Natasha didn’t believe in things like fate or luck or heaven, but she thanked God all the same that Steve Rogers had saved her.  And she prayed all the time now where she never had before.  She prayed that this endured, that Steve continued to stay with her even if she pulled away when the darkness crept back into her heart.  That he continued to tolerate her and be patient with her even when her old icy defenses came back up and divided them.  That he continued to believe in her even when she didn’t entirely believe in herself.  That he continued to love her, because even in this short time, she’d grown so dependent on him that she didn’t know what she would do if she lost him.

Even being away from him was too painful.  It was pathetic, and she knew it, but there was this excitement of new love that sped her heart like she was some simpering, stupid girl.  She was a hardened assassin, a master spy, a SHIELD agent, and an Avenger.  But he managed to rather effectively strip all that away and leave her longing for him like this was some ridiculous school-aged crush.  She was infatuated with him.  She loved and hated it at once.  Well, mostly she loved it.  He was still a guilty pleasure, _her_ guilty pleasure, and she couldn’t go without it.  She didn’t have to hide that or anything else from him.  Not anymore.

So she was hungry.  But not for breakfast.

Well, not just for breakfast.

The sight of him standing there, in jeans that hung low on his hips without a belt and a red shirt that revealed every bit of _why_ he was Captain America, was too hard to resist.  While he turned back to cooking, she slipped across the white tiles of his kitchen.  He turned off the stove and was using a spatula to get her eggs onto her plate when she set her hands to his waist from behind.  He was much taller than her, so her face only reached between his shoulder blades, but she’d never been daunted by that (or anything else) before as she slipped her wandering fingers under his shirt and up his back.  She pushed the fabric up and followed her traveling hands with her mouth.  “Wow, you don’t waste a second,” he said softly.

Powerful muscles flexed under lips as he reached for the toast.  She pressed a line of playful kisses up his spine.  “You kidding?” she whispered lowly. “I’ve been thinking about this.  This is all I’ve been thinking about.”

“For how long?”

“Since I left.”

“Not good to be distracted on the job.”

“Yeah.  Don’t tell my partner.  He has a real hard-on for the rules.”  She stood on her toes and caught the lobe of his ear gently between her teeth.  “And other things.”

“Like what?”

She kissed down to the nape of his neck.  “Me.”

He laughed.  “Don’t you want to eat first?  It’ll get cold.”

“You can make more.”

“That’s wasteful,” Steve lightly chastised, but she could tell she was really turning him on.  He wasn’t very good at hiding it.  He wasn’t very good at hiding anything.  It was one of the things that she liked so much about him.  He wore everything on his sleeve, his compassionate heart and hard-set morals and chivalrous nature.  That helped her do the same more and more often where she never used to be able to even admit her feelings to herself (or that she even had feelings).   And she also liked being in control.  This wasn’t to say she didn’t enjoy it when he took charge, but she honestly got so much excitement and euphoria out of the flustered look of arousal she still caught in his eyes when she did things like this that that was a reward in and of itself.  She sincerely doubted any other woman had ever reduced Captain America to a sputtering, blushing, grinning fool, and she never tired of it.

Her fingers deftly unbuttoned his jeans.  “I just got dressed,” he said.  She could hear the way his voice tightened just a bit in anticipation.

“You got something better to do?” she asked as her fingers danced along the waist-band of his boxer briefs.  They slipped lower, which earned her a sharply drawn breath and a jerk of his hips against her.  “I mean, other than me.  All day.”

He fumbled with his pans and plates for a moment more before turning.  She stood on her toes  again just as he caught her lips in searing kiss.  Natasha opened her mouth to him, unzipping his jeans for better access as he wrapped his hands in her mussed hair.  Breathing was inconsequential, his firm grip on her head keeping her mouth tight against his as his tongue pushed inside and swept over her teeth.  Eventually she wriggled away, pulling his shirt over his head as she did and tossing it to the side.  God, she’d missed this.  She’d only been gone a couple of days, but as pathetic as it sounded, it had felt like a lifetime.  She was addicted to him, to the way he moved, to his raw strength and power, to _every_ inch of him from his deep blue eyes to his comforting voice to his fingers that had learned so quickly exactly what she liked.  He stood before her in all of his splendor, all planes and bulges of hard muscles and smooth skin.  The super soldier serum he’d received during World War II had brought him to the very pinnacle of human perfection, and it showed (boy, did it ever).  She never got tired of looking at it, admiring it (and wondering how the hell she’d gotten so lucky for it to be _hers_ ), and she would have spent more time appreciating it if it weren’t for her driving desire.  She wasn’t lying about having all day.  They could slow down later.  She planted a line of hot, wet kisses down his chest, down across his pecs and abs and lower.  “God, Nat,” he moaned.  She dug her nails into his hips as he squirmed with mounting desire.  She kissed and teased and tormented until he grunted with frustration and pulled her back up.  “Okay, you win.”

“When are you going to realize that I always do, Rogers?”  She smiled against his mouth.  He devoured her, sweeping his hands under her rear to lift her against him.  She wrapped her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist.

“Bed,” he gasped.  “Now.”

“Aye-aye, Cap.”

* * *

At this point it was _really_ too late.  Too late to get up and go into SHIELD Headquarters.  And she was too tired and too comfortable to care.  She lay against Steve in his bed, her head on his chest, his heart beating underneath her ear.  His fingers were lazily caressing up and down her back.  She closed her eyes, breathing deeply with him and listening, as relaxed and contented as she could ever remember feeling.  This indeed seemed like a dream, and sometimes she was still afraid it was.  Sometimes she feared she’d wake up and find herself alone again and trapped in one of the innumerable nightmares of her life before him.

“How did your mission go?”

The low rumble of his voice pierced through the haze of spent passion and pleasure through which she was happily drifting.  She opened her eyes.  She knew him too well now not to notice the touch of irritation in his tone.  He was still on medical leave, _still_ even six weeks after he’d been shot, and it had been wearing on him more and more.  He was recovered (mostly, though she knew there were moments where his back slightly and stubbornly troubled him), but as of yet the SHIELD doctors hadn’t cleared him for active duty.  Bitterly he suspected they were following orders, and that meant it was Fury who was purposefully keeping him benched.  SHIELD was a breeding ground for gossip, but Natasha had a feeling the falling out between its Director and its best soldier was more than a rumor.  The mission into Crimea had damaged Steve’s trust in SHIELD.  She’d been a part of that (and that really bothered her, though she couldn’t admit that to him because of her own shame).  But it hadn’t just been her secret mission to obtain the insanity serum and it hadn’t just been the lies.  Something wasn’t right, and they both knew it.

Still, with things the way they were, Steve was out of the loop.  He’d been given strict instructions to rest and recuperate, and Natasha had to admit that he’d needed it.  His injuries would have killed a normal man numerous times over.  They’d nearly killed him.  She’d stayed with him the first few days after he’d come home from the infirmary, and though it bruised his ego, he’d really needed her help.  Captain America could take hits like no one else could; with the serum in his body, he was beyond strong and resilient.  But he’d been so bruised and weak and sore that simple things like getting dressed and getting in and out of chairs and his bed were difficult and taxing.  She’d never made a big deal about it, silently helping him climb back to his feet, taking care of him, waiting on him (she was Black Widow and she didn’t _do_ things like this, but she did it for him and without complaint).  She’d helped him weather the pain, and there had been a significant amount of it.  She’d learned a lot more about the very depths of his determination as she watched him pull himself back up after falling so hard and so far.  She watched him suffer through agony that would have left anyone else utterly defeated.  She’d known it before (everyone did) but this completely reaffirmed it.  It wasn’t just the super soldier serum that made him so strong.

That had been weeks ago, though, and he was long since back to normal.  He was restless and bored.  He’d been back to the Triskelion a few times only to be turned away by Hill and Sitwell.  He struck Natasha as someone who didn’t know what to do with himself during downtime simply because he so rarely had it.  He was reading and drawing (she’d never been aware that he was such a good artist until she’d started living with him) and catching up on his list of things that had been recommended to him to help him acclimate to the 21st century.  His frustration had only gotten worse as Natasha had resumed her duties for SHIELD.  She’d gone back to work, leaving for days at a time on missions for Fury, and Steve stayed behind, downright lonely and irritated though he was doing his best not to show it.  Life at SHIELD was going on after the fiasco in Crimea, and he wasn’t a part of it.

Truth be told, it was starting to not sit well with Natasha, either.  At first she’d been happy that he was being forced to take it easy and recover completely.  He’d been brave (and crazy) enough to rescue her after the Red Guardian had beaten him down and broken his back.  As much as she was grateful that he’d gotten her out of Brushov’s vile clutches, he’d paid a hell of a price.  He wasn’t invincible, and that stark fact had struck all of SHIELD.  Since he could take the hits and do the missions that no one else could, he did.  That was frightening in a way it had never been before, both because he could be so badly hurt and because she loved him.  Still, he was going crazy stuck at home, and she couldn’t help but feel for him.  And she couldn’t help but wonder why Fury hadn’t allowed him back into the game.

“Nat?”

“Sorry,” she said, pulling away from her thoughts.  “It was fine.  Data mining.”

“Again?”

“Data mining” was what agents called the missions where they slipped into a secure location and, for lack of a better term, stole information.  She had to admit her latest series of assignments was strange.  The last couple of weeks she’d been on a half dozen missions like this to various places around the world.  Warehouses and factories and hotels.  Abandoned places.  She’d hardly encountered any resistance, and what little she had she hadn’t been able to trace to any known terrorist or hostile groups.  Her task had been simple.  Get in, get to whatever computer system that was housed in the location, copy all the data available, and get out.  Deliver what she acquired directly to Fury.  This wasn’t the sort of thing she typically did.  These missions were often relegated to more junior agents because, in the shadowy and dangerous world of international espionage, they were fairly simple and usually not that hazardous (of course that depended on the nature of the installation to be infiltrated, but these had all been empty or poorly guarded).  It was beneath her to be doing things like this.  And that meant SHIELD’s Director was sending her in for a reason.  “Fury’s looking for something.”

Steve didn’t argue with that.  “Any idea what?”

She shrugged against him.  “No.  The files were all encrypted.”

She felt him smile.  “And you didn’t try to break them?”

“I do have some principles,” she said, “despite your opinion otherwise.”  She waited a minute before smiling herself.  He knew her better than she realized sometimes.  “Besides, whoever locked them up was slightly smarter than me.  Slightly.”

He kissed the top of her head.  “Doubt that.”

“You’re so full of it,” she said smartly, lifting her head and kissing him.  “And no SHIELD business while you’re on R&R.”

“Fury’s orders?” Steve asked.  His tone was more hurt than she’d anticipated.

“Mine,” she corrected.

He smiled tightly.  “Sorry.  Just driving myself nuts sitting here and doing nothing.  I’m completely fine now.  Have been for days.”

“I know.”  She kissed him again, sweeping her hand up his chest to bring his face closer to hers.  She closed her eyes and basked in it for a second (only a little ashamed of herself to be doing it).  Of course, having him home had had its perks.  The soldier in him had never let him sleep in once he’d been well enough to get back on his feet, and the responsible man in him had never let him completely relax when he knew there was work to be done.  But there was no doubting they’d had fun together.  A lot of fun like this, slow, lazy days filled with kisses and caresses and (dare she even think it) snuggling.  She’d never known how pleasurable these simplicities were because her life before had never permitted them.  She didn’t think his had, either.  “I’m sure Fury has his reasons for this.  And it’s not just because you pissed him off.”

Steve didn’t seem convinced.  “You sure about that?”

“Fury may be many things, but petty isn’t one of them.  And neither is stupid.  He knows he needs you.”  Natasha traced his jaw with her finger.  “Besides, it hasn’t been all bad, has it?”

“No,” he agreed.  “Been able to catch up on some reading.  And finish off those _Star Wars_ movies Stark sent me a few months ago.  And daytime TV.  What a great thing _that_ is.  And my apartment’s never been so clean.  Tried out some new fabric softeners.  And–”  She socked him playfully in the stomach.  “Ow!  What?”  She gave him a withering look.  He grinned a pretty sneaky grin, the sort of which she bet most people didn’t think the serious and stern Captain America was capable.  “Alright, and having you take care of me.  That’s been okay.”

“Just okay?  I was going to lay around with you all day, but if you think that’s just _okay_ , I’ll get–”

“Nope.”  He grabbed her arms and stopped her from moving away from him before she’d even truly begun to try.  He rolled and took her with him, pinning her beneath him.  He was much stronger than her and quite a bit bigger, so she couldn’t break free if she tried.  She didn’t try.  “You’re mine, right?”

“Other way around.”

He smiled and captured her mouth with his.  She wrapped her legs and arms around him, the sheets and part of the comforter trapped between them.  They kissed a moment more, lazily and gently, and then Steve sagged down on top of her.  He was still careful enough to keep his weight off of her even as he laid his head on her chest.  He was always careful, like it was engrained in him.  She wove her fingers through his hair.  “Met someone out running today,” he said after a while.  “Sam Wilson.  Did a couple of tours in Afghanistan.”

“Yeah?”

“He’s a nice guy.  Works down at the VA now.  I thought maybe I’d go down there.  Check it out.”

“Wow.  You must _really_ be bored.”  Now he gave her a withering look.  She felt just the slightest bit guilty for her snarky response.  Aside from her, a lingering friendship with Tony Stark, and a few acquaintances and co-workers at SHIELD, Steve was still alone in this time.  He’d lost everything and everyone he’d known when he’d crashed in the ice outside of Greenland in 1945.  She’d immediately noticed when they’d first been partnered that he’d been lonely.  After all, he’d been rescued by SHIELD, thawed out, and immediately thrust into leading the Avengers during the Battle of New York.  And after that, he’d joined SHIELD and had been quickly put to work defending freedom and protecting world security.  There hadn’t been a lot of time or opportunity for him to try and reclaim his life, his life that had ended seventy years ago during the height of World War II.  So anything and everything he did to find some happiness outside of their dangerous and hectic existence was good, she supposed, even if she herself didn’t feel it was necessary.  “You should.  I’m sure it’ll make their day to have Captain America stop by.”

“Yeah,” he said quietly, his eyes glazed suddenly as though something was bothering him.  “We talked for a while.  He got out after his wingman was killed.  I don’t know.”

When he didn’t say anything further, she prompted him.  “What?”

“It just got me thinking, I guess.”

This was still new to her, this opening up about thoughts and feelings and needs and memories.  It came naturally to him, but she’d been trained to ignore her conscience, to hide herself under countless covers and manufacture emotions as the situation required it.  It was difficult to overcome her instincts.  “What about?”

He hesitated, closing his eyes like he was tired as she continued to run her fingers through his hair.  “I don’t know.  Maybe this is some sort of sign.”

She didn’t like the sound of this.  “Sign of what?”

“That I should walk away.”

Suddenly she couldn’t breathe.  “From SHIELD?”

He nodded.  She couldn’t help the wave of fear and panic that came over her.  It was strong enough and it took her by surprise hard enough to break through her calm exterior.  Her fingers paused in their path through his hair.  It was a minute thing, but of course he noticed right away.  He lifted his head, bracing his chin on his fist.  “I don’t know if I can go back and throw myself in it.  I don’t know if I trust SHIELD enough anymore.”

“You trust me,” she said.  Her words sounded more hurt than she intended them to.

“Of course I trust you.”  His voice was filled with hurt, too.  “I love you, Nat.  You know I do.”  He said this with such complete sincerity, the way he always said it.  It always made her feel stupid and foolish for questioning it.  She released a slow breath, watching as he dipped his gaze.  He took her hand and kissed it slowly, brushing his lips over each of her fingers with tenderness and devotion.  When he was done, he held it to his face, sighing softly.  She rubbed her thumb over his lower lip, cupping his chin.  “It’s just…  Maybe I already have one foot out the door, you know?  After what happened.”

This was real.  He was truly having serious doubts.  She’d realized that his trust in SHIELD had been damaged but not to this extent.  Natasha didn’t know what to say.  She couldn’t think and couldn’t find her voice.  “What would you do?”

He sagged slightly.  “I don’t know.”  The silence that came was heavy and worrisome.  She couldn’t believe he was saying this.  He was Captain America, for God’s sake.  He didn’t quit.  He didn’t give up.  Of course he’d been rattled by the mission into Crimea.  He had good reason to be upset, Fury lying and the incidents with the STRIKE Team notwithstanding.  But leaving?  The mere thought of that was distressing in a way that was novel and sharp.  She’d been part of SHIELD for far longer than he had, but even before they’d become lovers, even when they’d just been partners, she’d quickly come to associate him with SHIELD.  He brought light and integrity to what they did, noble purpose and valor to their often times dark and murky lives.  Captain America was SHIELD’s greatest asset, a weapon against the evil of the world, the best soldier in history and a black ops specialist like no one else.  Without him, she would be anchorless.  Weightless.

She felt like she was already with her heart pounding and the room spinning just a little.  Just as she was about to acknowledge the mounting sense of betrayal simmering in her heart, he laid his head back down on her.  “I won’t go without you,” he murmured into her skin.  Her fingers tentatively resumed their mindless stroking of his hair.  “And I’m not saying that to force you out.  I’ll stay for you.  I always will.  I just…  I don’t know what’s right anymore, Nat.”

Honestly, she didn’t either.  Steve had seen it.  Clint had seen it.  She’d seen it, too.  There was something going on.  Maybe it was as simple as SHIELD switching its philosophies; they’d been on the offensive these last few months.  Since New York, the World Security Council had been taking a harder line against evil, opting for pre-emptive attacks that crushed and killed suspects rather than arresting them.  Steve refused to be a part of that no matter how Fury attempted to persuade him.  He still saw the world as good and evil, black and white, with firm divisions between right and wrong.  Natasha respected that about him, but she still thought it was naïve.  He was beginning to realize it was, too, but he wasn’t willing to compromise, not about morality or truth or doing the best he could for the world.  She had been.  On behalf of SHIELD she regularly lied and stole things and murdered evil men.  She’d turned a blind eye to countless lesser evils because they were often necessary to prevent greater evils from occurring.    Steve didn’t see it that way.  Despite how foolish that was, she hoped he never did.

So there was that.  But she wasn’t sure that was all of it.  The whole attitude of the STRIKE Team during their mission to Crimea has been downright confrontational.  Granted she’d been turned to the wrong side, but it had been against her will.  They’d had no compassion, no understanding, no willingness to try and save her.  If it hadn’t been for Steve, she would have been killed by them.  She was damn sure of it.  And Steve was fairly certain they’d purposefully defied his orders on at least one occasion.  That wasn’t SHIELD.  She didn’t know what it was.

She didn’t want to think about this anymore.  Thankfully, he changed the subject.  “Want some lunch?  It’s kinda late for breakfast.”  He leaned up, kissing her as he did, and hopped from his bed in search of his clothes.

“You can still have breakfast for lunch.  Breakfast is acceptable for any meal,” she said, leaning up and managing a smile.  That small exchange had shaken her, but she knew she could hide it.  “Come here.”  He pulled his underwear on and his jeans back up and leaned down.  She tugged him closer on his knees.  “You don’t need to worry so much,” she assured softly.  She stared into his eyes, resting her hands on the sides of his neck.  “Fury’s going to get you back out there.”

“I know,” he said, flushing a little bit.  He flashed a grin at her.  “Alright, breakfast.  Gimme a sec.”

Natasha watched him head back to the kitchen.  Then she flopped back down in his bed and reached for her phone.  She thumbed through the huge pile of email awaiting her.  Mission reports.  Security notices.  Updates on current operations and projects.  It was too much to deal with, and she wasn’t in the mood.  She set it to the nightstand instead and got out of bed and headed to the shower.

By the time she was done getting ready, she could smell coffee and bacon again.  She dressed in pair of jeans and a tan top.  She grabbed her phone again, resigning herself to the huge pile of work awaiting her.  She really shouldn’t have shirked it because it had only gotten larger.  She sat on the couch in his den, going through the first group of emails and responding where she could.  She didn’t get further than that because she noticed some files with the SHIELD emblem on them spread over his coffee table.  She didn’t remember seeing those before she’d left two days ago, so she reached for them, her curiosity piqued.  “What’s this stuff?” she called down the hallway.

It was pretty obvious what it was as she started looking through it.  “Oh.  SHIELD’s files from SSR about the war.”  She found herself leafing through documents on the Howling Commandos and the missions they’d done.  There were notes from Howard Stark and Peggy Carter on the Commandos’ operations as they’d blazed across Europe to shut down HYDRA, the rogue science division of Nazi Germany.  Most of these files centered on one Sergeant James Barnes.  Natasha knew who that was.

The sound of his footsteps drew her attention, and she looked up as he handed her a black mug filled with coffee and a plate full of eggs and bacon and toast.  He sipped his own cup, leaning against the door frame of the den.  “The Smithsonian opened up some sort of…”  At this he flushed with embarrassment.  “… _exhibit_ on me.  And the Commandos.  They wanted to know if I wanted to add anything.”

“Oh.”  That was a pretty big deal.  But the tone of Steve’s voice indicated he wasn’t sure what he thought about it, so she reined in her own reaction.

“The curator called a couple of days ago with some questions.  Questions about Bucky and some comments he made and things he did during a few missions.  Honestly, I couldn’t remember the answers, but I got the files from records.  I was going to call her back, but…  I don’t know.  Doesn’t seem right somehow.”  He smiled sadly.  “Bucky’s been dead for seventy years, but people seem to forget that for me it hasn’t been that long at all.”

Natasha looked at the old black and white pictures in the file opened on her lap.  The quality wasn’t that good, but she recognized Barnes right away.  He was the young man always standing beside Captain America with an easy, rakish smile and dark hair.  He was handsome, and in every picture he was proud with brotherly affection.  Bucky Barnes, Steve’s best friend from Brooklyn.  Steve didn’t talk about him much, but Natasha knew the story.  Everyone did.  They’d both been sons of Irish immigrants, poor boys who’d lived next door to each other and become unlikely companions at a young age.  Barnes had looked after Steve, who’d been small and sickly and constantly tormented and beaten on by the larger kids of the neighborhood.  And when Barnes had gone off to war, Steve had been bound and determined to follow him, despite his poor health and unfortunate physique.  It had been that bravery and honor and strength of character that had won Steve the one and only spot in Project: Rebirth.  And a few months later, Captain America had rescued Barnes and most of the 107th infantry division from a HYDRA factory deep in Italy.

  The end of the story was sadder.  Barnes had become a Howling Commando, and together he and Steve and the rest of their team had labored and fought to defeat HYDRA and its leader, Johann Schmidt.  One mission to capture Arnim Zola, Schmidt’s lead scientist and right-hand man, had ended with Barnes falling to his death from a train in the Alps.  A few weeks later, Steve had been lost when he’d crashed the _Valkyrie_ into the ice shelf.  Together they’d saved the world, but the cost for them both had been devastatingly high.  Steve’s body had been found.  Bucky’s body never was.

Natasha closed the file.  “You sure have done a lot of brooding while I was away,” she commented as she set it to table.  Steve smiled a little at that and took another sip of his coffee.  “It doesn’t suit you.”

He walked further into the den before sitting next to her.  He set his coffee to the table and grabbed the file.  “I think too much when I get bored,” he confessed.  He opened it and looked through it for a second, his eyes a million miles away.  Then he shook his head.  “And I’m being ridiculous.  He deserves every honor I can get for him.  An exhibit in a national museum seems like a pretty big one.”

“Not everybody gets something like that,” Natasha said.  She took her plate and started to eat.  “It’s okay to move on, Steve.”

“I know.  I just…”  He groaned and leaned back into the sofa in exasperation.  “I need something to do.”  The image of Captain America whining wasn’t something she’d ever imagined she’d see.  He flung his arms over his eyes and tipped his head back.  “Something better than just sittin’ around here anyway.  I can’t stand this anymore.”

She finished eating her eggs and nudged him a little on the leg.  “If it makes you feel better, your cooking’s improved,” she said with a sly smile.

“No, not really.”

Her phone buzzed again.  Natasha grabbed it from the table and swept her thumb over it to unlock the screen.  Then her mood instantly plummeted. “Damn it,” she said.

“What?”

“They want me back at the Triskelion.”  She was angry.  Downright and blatantly.  This sort of thing hadn’t bothered her before too much, when her work with SHIELD had been the entirety of her existence.  Now it wasn’t anymore.

Steve sensed her frustration.  “What for?”

Natasha shoved her plate away in irritation.  “Doesn’t say.  Probably another mission briefing.”    She’d just gotten back.  Hell, she hadn’t even debriefed Fury on the events of the _last_ mission yet!

“Ignore it,” he offered.  He reached for her hand and pulled her closer.  “Stay with me.  You promised me we could–”

“I can’t.”  They both knew it, and it was uncharacteristic of him to suggest that she shirk her duties even if it was done playfully.  They both knew that, too.  She stood and went back to the bedroom to find her shoes and jacket.

His expression hardened slightly, a bit in his own bitterness and hurt over this damn aggravating situation, but mostly because she was upset.  She was leaving again, and he was still stuck at home, and they both hated it.  He knew she could take care of herself, but he didn’t like her going out there alone.  And she wanted him back at her side.  She’d gotten so accustomed to his strong and steady presence during their partnership that she felt naked and exposed without it.  “At least let me take you,” he said.  “Please?”

She paused by the mirror in his dresser to check her reflection.  Then she grabbed her gun and strapped it on her waist.  “Hill’s not going to let you in, Steve,” she reminded more tersely than she intended.  The sight of him sitting so frustrated and dejected on his couch was enough to melt her anger and dent her resolve.  God, he looked like a whipped puppy.  And the thought of clinging to him on the back of his motorcycle was appealing.  Not a substitute for a day full of lazing and watching bad TV and enjoying each other, but it was better than nothing.  “Alright.”  His face immediately brightened, ridiculously so, and she couldn’t help but smile herself and roll her eyes.  “Come on.  Let’s go.”


	2. Chapter 2

Natasha was right about it being ridiculously fun to cling to him on the back of his bike as he drove down the causeway toward the Triskelion.  She buried her face into his jacket, breathing deeply of leather and the warm air ripping by them.  Her arms were wrapped around his waist, and her mind was for once completely blank.  There was only the rumble of his bike (which was significantly more sensual than she’d anticipated) and his body, a wall of strength and muscle in front of her.  They’d done this before, gone riding with the bright sun overhead and the wind whipping through her hair and caressing her face, but this time felt more intimate and important for some reason.  More peaceful.  More meaningful.  She realized why as they pulled off US-50 and onto the bridge that spanned the gleaming waters of the Potomac and led to the Triskelion.  Natasha didn’t put a lot of stock in things like fate or destiny, but she’d learned a long time ago to trust her instincts.  Maybe she was still riled from what Steve had said earlier.  Maybe that could explain the uneasy fingers that seemed to be clenching and squeezing her stomach.  But she couldn’t shake the feeling that something wasn’t right, that something bad was on the horizon.  That this life she’d inexplicably been leading the last few weeks wasn’t going to last.

So she didn’t let go of him, not even as they passed through the security checkpoint though she did lean back so as not to seem so much like she was desperate to keep her hands on him and her body against his.  She was fairly certain it was common knowledge at this point that she and Steve were dating (Black Widow didn’t “date”, but she could only delude herself so much because that was exactly what they were doing).  The STRIKE Team, and their commander Brock Rumlow, had had no qualms about fueling the rumors that were running rampant through SHIELD about what had happened in Crimea.  There might have been hope that the one night of passion she’d shared with Steve in Yalta could have been kept quiet, but everything surrounding the moment where she’d shot him had pretty effectively destroyed any chance for discretion.  People knew she was sleeping with Captain America.  _Everyone_ seemed to know it.  And people were looking at her differently now.  No one was bold enough to come out and say it, but her peers and co-workers regarded her with a mixture of surprise, uncertainty, and pity.  Natasha had never cared much about what people had thought of her before, but she did now and not just because the events in Crimea had rattled her.  Steve’s reputation was tied with hers now, and even though she had never minded being labeled a seductress, assassin, and spy, she didn’t want that blackness spread onto him.  The whispers that followed her everywhere were bothersome to say the least, difficult and distracting at their worst, and she felt unsteady enough in her career and so absolutely calm at home with Steve that everything was upside down and backwards.  She was compromised in a way she’d never anticipated, and being at SHIELD, particularly being there with Steve, was bringing that into sharp realization.

Steve pulled into the garage, a huge, sprawling cement well beneath the Triskelion.  The deep grumble of his bike echoed in the dark, vacuous space as he parked.  He killed the engine and straightened himself.  She didn’t move.  She knew she should, but she couldn’t make herself pull away.  His large hands came to grasp hers where they were linked across his chest, and his fingers wove through them.  “You okay?”

This was stupid, and she had a job to do.  She’d done it so eagerly in the past, relishing the power and freedom and thrill that came with what she did and how well she did it.  It was remarkable how quickly she’d come to value something else.  Someone else.  “Yeah.”  But she still didn’t let go, resting her head in between his shoulder blades and feeling him breathe.

The garage was so quiet around them.  Steve didn’t move, lingering as much as she was though she could tell he didn’t understand why.  Truth be told, she didn’t either.  It was back to that odd and disconcerting feeling that _something_ was slipping away.  And the answer to that was to hold tighter, so she did.  “You know, you technically haven’t clocked in yet,” he said.  He turned to look over his shoulder.  “We can go back home.”

That sounded more and more alluring.  Why not?  She’d done her duty to SHIELD time and time again.  They’d both made sacrifices for SHIELD’s causes, some tangible sacrifices and some not.  Hell, they’d saved the world once with the Avengers and again when they’d stopped Brushov from selling his poison.  They were alone, and even though she knew the garage had surveillance cameras, she couldn’t muster up enough concern to stop herself.  She grabbed his face and pulled him closer, angling him around before kissing him soundly.  Steve seemed a little surprised, but that didn’t last him long as he hooked an arm around her waist and deepened the kiss.  She swept her hands up his chest, balling them in his shirt with insistence that made him twist into her more and groan.  “Okay,” he said, a tad breathless as she shifted her teeth to nip down his neck and her hands down his body.  “If you’re gonna do that, we _need_ to go back home.  Right now.  As in _now_ now.”

She wanted to.  So badly.  But she couldn’t just walk away.  “Sorry,” she purred against his mouth, though she wasn’t in the least bit and they both knew it.  “Later?”

He let out a short breath, a flustered grin twisting his lips.  “Torture me much?”

She smiled slyly to hide how uncertain she felt.  “You knew what you were getting into.”  She kissed him again, tenderly and without heat, before sliding off the back of his bike.  He followed her, adjusting his rumpled shirt and jacket.  She almost rolled her eyes again.  “You don’t need to walk me inside, Rogers.  I’m a big girl and this is probably the most secure building in the world.”

“I know.  Call me old-fashioned,” he said as he pocketed the keys to his bike in his jeans.

“Call you pathetic is more like it.  I don’t know what’s sadder,” she said as they started walking side by side to the elevator, “the fact that you think that you’re actually going to get past the lobby this time or that you think no one will gossip about Captain America escorting Black Widow to work.  I might as well get a head start and tweet about it now.”  The sad thing was with all the media attention and public adulation the Avengers had received after New York, if the rumors breached SHIELD and got loose people probably would be tweeting about it.  Loudly and incessantly.  The thought made her skin crawl.  Talk about blown cover.

“So what if they gossip?” Steve said, though there was respectful distance between them now.  He was right.  So what?  SHIELD had its rules, as every organization did, about fraternization within its ranks, especially within the chain of command.  Steve was not technically her commanding officer, but he generally led the missions they did together and everyone (including her) deferred to him.  His relationship with SHIELD had always been a tad amorphous.  He was an agent, but he was not bound by most of the rules and regulations other agents were.   He was Fury’s ally rather than strictly his subordinate, and that made the situation even more complicated.  Furthermore, if the love life of Captain America and Black Widow was fodder for the SHIELD rumor mill, then there was absolutely no way that Fury didn’t know already where she was spending her free time (what little of it she had).  And he hadn’t said or done anything to prevent their relationship, which either meant he didn’t care (unlikely) or that he didn’t want to upset or offend Steve any further (which was understandable, given the falling out they seemed to be having).  Or that he was biding his time to use their relationship to his own ends, like an ace in the hole.  As much as Natasha wanted to trust the SHIELD Director, she couldn’t put that possibility out of her head.  Fury was a master manipulator, even more talented than she was.  If he wanted to, Natasha was certain he would find a way to twist two of his greatest assets and the connection between them however he saw fit.

She didn’t say any of this to Steve, but it was more than possible he’d already been thinking the same things.  Steve was a lot more perceptive than people realized, than even she had realized before Crimea.  And Steve was noble and naïve to a fault.  Those personality traits made him susceptible to being used.  She knew this because she had used him herself in the past.  He stuck out like a sore thumb in this world of lies, murder, and espionage.  This wasn’t to say he was stupid or foolish, but he tended to think the best of people, that was a dangerous weakness to have in their business.  His argument with Fury over Brushov’s insanity serum had been something of a line in the sand, though, and from it all this doubt had grown on both of their parts.

Furthermore, something else was definitely strange about Fury.  Recently he’d become distant (at least, more distant), and he was keeping his hand even closer to this chest.  He’d never been friendly before, or even amiable, but Natasha knew him well enough to see he was troubled.  He was curter than normal, riled under his façade of strength and control.  All of this was only serving to heighten her fears (paranoid fears, surely) that something wasn’t right.  They walked into the elevator and Natasha gathered up her composure and buried her disquiet down deep.  “Lobby,” she called to the computer.

The biometric scanners immediately detected their identities.  “Lobby,” the feminine voice confirmed.  “Captain Rogers is not cleared for further entry.”

Steve stiffened slightly and ground his teeth in anger if the minute flexing of his jaw was any indication.  Although Natasha didn’t know why he’d expected any different, her heart immediately went out to him and she felt bad for even teasing him about his situation earlier.  The lift started to ascend.  “I’m going to talk to Hill,” she quietly promised, shifting her weight to stand a little closer to him.  “Get some answers.”

Steve glanced at her, his eyes steeped in frustration, but his expression softened and his stiff form relaxed.  “Thanks.”

She nodded.  Since it was fairly obvious he wasn’t going to be going any further than the lobby, she changed the subject.  “Have any plans for the rest of the day?”

Steve sighed slowly.  “You’re taking my plans with you,” he said with half a remorseful and disappointed smile.  Natasha felt rotten anew at the despondent look in his eyes.  “Thought I might go see Peggy.  I’ve been meaning to these last couple of days.  She’s… she’s not doing well.”  There was a lot hidden behind those words.  Pain and regret.  Natasha had learned quite a bit about Steve’s ill-fated romance with Peggy Carter over the last few weeks.  When they’d first come together, Natasha was only slightly ashamed to admit to herself (and no one else) that she’d been jealous of Carter.  Jealous of a ninety-five year old woman with whom Steve had shared a single kiss and a plan to go dancing during the height of World War II.  It had been completely childish and ridiculous.  Steve still loved Peggy, she knew, and a part of him always would.  Natasha couldn’t begrudge him that.  Steve and Peggy had shared a tentative romance, just the very beginning of something that could have been long and wonderful, but he had been lost in the Arctic and she’d been forced to go on with her life without him.  Seventy years later it was a grief-stricken, shattered thing, this dream of what might have been, and Natasha knew it was still a great source of pain for Steve.  She didn’t harbor such a harsh envy for Carter now as she had weeks ago.  What Steve still shared with Peggy was soft and gentle, driven more by duty and devotion than anything else, and Natasha knew she had no place in it.  She was at peace with that.  Her possessiveness had been tempered by Steve’s even stronger and unwavering devotion to her.  Peggy might have been his past, but Steve had told Natasha again and again that she was his future and she believed him with her whole heart.

And Carter was dying.  She was dying slowly, and her mind was being crushed under the weight of dementia.  Steve had told Natasha about it not long ago one night in bed.  He had gone to see Peggy that day and had come back, sullen and burdened.  It was difficult for him to let her go like this, a piece at a time.  He’d been yanked out of her life and then thrust back into it, and it was agonizing for them both, but mostly for him.  Natasha had only held him and silently listened, uncertain of what to feel and even more uncertain of how to help.  She had realized later, when Steve had been peacefully sleeping at her side, that listening was helping.  Supporting him was helping.  Being at his side was helping.  He didn’t want anything more than that.  So now she nodded at him and surreptitiously reached for his hand and offered a comforting smile, a smile she was beginning to realize she only had for him, and he smiled back.  He realized it, too.

The door opened, and Natasha immediately let his fingers go.  Together they walked out into the sleek, spacious lobby of the Triskelion.  Everything was chrome and shining silver and sleek gray.  Overhead a ceiling of windows revealed the towers, all three of them encircling a smaller, central building as they shot into the bright sky.  In the middle of the lobby, the SHIELD logo stood proud, the eagle looming over the people walking beneath it.  The place was bustling with agents, techs, and other people on SHIELD business.  It was always hectic like this.  SHIELD was sprawling, a massive organization that spanned the world, and this was its epicenter.

The minute they strolled deeper into the lobby, people took note of Steve.  They always did.  Natasha wasn’t sure if it was because he was Captain America or because he was with her or because of what had happened.  It didn’t matter.  The junior agents and techs with enough bravery came up to him, stuttering through greetings or awkwardly shaking his hand.  Others simply stopped and stared.  Natasha hung back as the group gathered around Steve grew, not comfortable with the scene for a number of reasons (not the least of which being that she was the reason Steve had almost died).  Steve looked increasingly unhappy with the attention, though he was doing a decent job of not being rude about it.

“People,” came a terse call behind them.  Jasper Sitwell stood there, looking displeased.  Natasha had known him for years, ever since she had joined SHIELD.  As one of the agents in charge of SHIELD’s logistical operations, he was extremely proficient at his job.  He’d once been a force in the field, but these last couple of years he’d worked with the higher-ups, coordinating directly between Fury and the various operation centers around the globe.  Sitwell was a decent guy, smart as a whip and very no-nonsense.  “I believe you all have work to do.”

The group dispersed under Sitwell’s glare.  Once they were gone, the senior agent came closer.  “Agent Romanoff,” he said in greeting.  “Barton’s waiting for you in detention.  They’re going to be moving Garanin to a maximum security installation in a few hours, and apparently he’d like to speak with you before he goes.  Hill thought it might be worth shaking him up again.  See if anything more falls out of the tree.”  Apparently this was why they’d summoned her that morning.  Natasha schooled her face.  She was far too professional to let the fact that it bothered her show.  Sitwell turned to Steve.  “Captain.”

“Agent Sitwell,” Steve said with a nod.

“You look well,” Sitwell commented.  It was hard to see what he was thinking given his inflectionless tone.  But his intentions became clear enough.  Steve opened his mouth, probably to try to convince the other man that he _was_ well, so much so that he needed to be back on duty, but Sitwell spoke further before he could even begin to plead his case.  “Don’t bother, Rogers.  I’m really sorry but my hands are tied.  I can’t do anything about it.”

Steve was exasperated.  “This is getting ridiculous.  I’ve been cooling my heels for weeks.”

Sitwell shrugged unsympathetically.  “The order is coming directly from Fury.”

Steve’s face hardened into a tense glare at the dismissive response.  Natasha watched the frustration simmer in his eyes.  “Can you at least explain why?”

“Because I think Director Fury is frightened.”  The voice drew their attention.  An older gentleman, flanked by assistants, approached from the massive staircase to the second floor behind them.  He was dressed in an expensive gray suit and expertly polished dress shoes.  His face was aged and wrinkled, crowned by slightly mussed tan hair, but his eyes were still very much alight.  He walked with a certain poise, the confidence of someone who knew he had immense responsibilities and equally immense power at his fingertips to see those duties fulfilled.  Natasha recognized him immediately, though she’d only met him once before and had never had the occasion to speak with him.  This man was the Secretary of Defense, the one who literally controlled SHIELD and interfaced the massive organization with both the US government and the World Security Council.  He smiled an easy smile as he approached their small group.  His hand was outstretched.  “Forgive me, Captain, but in all this time that you’ve been with us, I don’t think we’ve ever had the opportunity to meet.  I’m Alexander Pierce.”

Steve nodded and shook the man’s hand firmly.  Natasha knew him too well not to see the slight hint of hesitation in his eyes.  Steve might not have known Pierce personally, but it was more than clear from that flash of wariness that he’d already formed some opinions about the man.  “It’s an honor, sir.”

“The honor’s mine.  My father served in the 101st during the Normandy Invasion.  Said your strength and courage were a symbol to the entire US infantry,” Pierce said with a friendly smile.  He closed his other hand over Steve’s where it was still clasped in his own.  “Believe me when I tell you that Nick Fury isn’t the only one who was afraid of what happened in Russia and how close we came to losing you.  You are far too valuable an ally, irreplaceable in fact, and considering how dangerous the world is becoming we need the very best we have standing with us.”  His smile became broader.  “And believe me as well that there’s nothing any of us can do to express our gratitude to you.  If it hadn’t been for your heroic actions in Volgograd, we might have faced a global catastrophe.”

“Thank you,” Steve said.

Pierce finally let him go.  “How are you feeling?”

“I’m fine, sir,” Steve answered, shifting his weight slightly.  There wasn’t a shred of doubt in his voice.  “Back on my feet.”

Pierce nodded, appraising Steve evenly.  “Looks that way.  And I think the time for worrying about this is well past us.  If you’re ready, willing, and able, then there’s no reason you should be sitting on the bench while our enemies continue to crowd around us.  Using our assets to their fullest extent is what keeps us ahead in this game.  I’ll talk to Director Fury about getting you reinstated.”

This was exactly what Steve had wanted, but it came so far out of nowhere and so suddenly that he looked absolutely shocked.  He shared a glance with Natasha that he shouldn’t have, so relieved and alarmed by the offer.  “Thank you, sir,” he said, floundering with half a smile on his face.

“We need you out there, Captain.  Normally I don’t step on Director Fury’s toes, but I think I have to insist this time.  When I meet with him later today, I’ll put in a good word on your behalf, okay?”  A good word.  That seemed like a fancy way of manhandling Fury into doing what Pierce wanted.  Natasha had no idea what the relationship between Fury and Pierce was like.  She knew they had some history, that they had worked together through some tense situations in the past, and that Pierce had made Fury Director of SHIELD after Peggy Carter had resigned.  Pierce had the ultimate say over SHIELD’s operations, but it seemed to Natasha he generally let Fury to have free rein to do as he pleased.  This seemed an odd thing over which to pull rank.

If Steve thought the same thing, it wasn’t obvious.  “Thank you,” he said again.

Pierce touched his arm amiably.  “Better go enjoy the last day of your vacation,” he suggested with a warm grin.  Then he turned to Natasha, and his eyes hardened.  “Agent Romanoff, you’re just the person I needed to see.  Do you mind walking with me back up to my office?  I’d like to have a word with you.”

Something akin to dread coiled tightly in the pit of Natasha’s stomach.  “I’m needed on the detention level.”

“This will only take a minute,” Pierce assured.  “I’m sure they can wait.”

She didn’t dare look at Steve, unwilling to betray even the slightest bit that she wanted his support (hell, she wasn’t even going to admit to herself that she wanted his support).  She was an agent of SHIELD and a master spy, and she’d handled far more intimidating and daunting situations than this.  Still, she didn’t want to go with Pierce if she could avoid it.  There was no way to escape, unfortunately, so she nodded and gracefully stepped away without even so much as a glance behind her.  “Take care, Captain,” Pierce said.  “Nice to finally meet you.”

Steve didn’t respond, and Natasha couldn’t see his reaction to all of this.  Pierce slid his hands smoothly into the pockets of his suit and fell in step beside her as they walked to the elevators on the other side of the lobby.  Once there, Pierce pressed his thumb in the call button.  Natasha realized instantly that neither Sitwell nor Pierce’s aides had followed them.  That set her even more on edge.  “You and Captain Rogers have gotten close, haven’t you.”  It wasn’t a question.

Everything her instincts had screamed at her about being on guard seemed to be true.  She wasn’t going to react.  “I don’t see how my personal life is at all relevant to anything you need to ask me,” she said calmly, softly, “sir.”

“It’s a commonly held belief around here that SHIELD agents don’t have personal lives because nothing you do or say is private.  I would think that Black Widow would know that best of all.  There’s always someone watching.”  She couldn’t tell if what he said was a threat or a statement of fact.  The elevator arrived with a soft chirp of the computer.  “You don’t like me, do you, Agent Romanoff.”  That was also not a question, and this time she felt no reason to answer.  There was nothing at all accidental or coincidental about this meeting.  She wasn’t stupid.  Pierce chuckled slightly as the doors opened before them.  “Don’t tell me you’re still holding a grudge about being arrested.”  _Bastard._   Still, she said nothing, gritting her teeth and following him inside the lift.  “Not that I mean to make light of it, but you know why it had to be done.  We were facing an international crisis.  There was a great deal of internal strife surrounding the incident as well.  We needed to seem like we were taking action to hold someone responsible.  I’m truly sorry that someone was you,” he said.  He tipped his head and offered her a knowing and slightly disapproving look.  “But you were the one who shot Captain America.”

To that she still said nothing, even though her heart was pounding in pain and it was all she could do to breathe evenly and stay motionless.  She’d fought so hard to come out of her shell, to accept herself for who she really was and embrace honesty, and now she needed to get back there right away, back to that place inside her where she couldn’t feel.  Where she could lie without conscience or consequence.  “Secretary’s office,” Pierce directed the computer.  It responded, and the lift started to ascend.  He sighed.  “I wasn’t lying before when I said Captain Rogers is an extremely valuable asset.  And I honestly have no interest in your relationship with him.  The work you do is difficult, no doubt about that, so if it grounds you both, more power to you.  But I would like to know if you think he’s prepared to return to the field.”

Natasha’s mind raced at that question.  She herself was an expert at emotional manipulation, so she knew well the signs of it.  First and foremost, Pierce had already offered Steve his vote of confidence and promised to speak with Fury about getting him back to active duty, so the older man was definitely playing him.  And she was pretty damn sure this wasn’t what Pierce really wanted to ask her.  This was some sort of test of her loyalty.  To what purpose, she didn’t know, but it set her even more on edge.  “If Captain Rogers says he’s ready, then he’s ready.”

“He took a hell of a beating,” Pierce casually commented, “and he disobeyed direct orders.  I doubt a man of his character would have done either of those two things if he trusted the men giving those orders.”

“If you’re asking me if he’s still loyal to SHIELD, he is,” Natasha returned quickly.  She wouldn’t betray Steve’s confidence about his doubts.  Her voice was emotionless.

“How about you?”  Pierce looked at her evenly.  His voice was also emotionless.  “Are you loyal to SHIELD?”  In all the time she’d worked for SHIELD, and given from where she’d come, she’d _never_ been asked that, at least not by anyone within the organization.  And it wasn’t just the question itself that bothered her.  It was the way he was asking it, like the answer didn’t matter nearly as much as her reaction to his doubt which bordered on accusation.  Therefore, she steeled her features and narrowed her eyes.  He smiled faintly and shifted to walk to the other end of the lift.  He leaned his hip against the railing by the window.  Outside the scenery was flying by as they rapidly climbed the Triskelion.  “I only ask because there have been whispers of dissension.  A lot of people questioning whose loyalties lie where.  I know you were under the influence of some pretty nasty drugs in Russia when you attacked the STRIKE Team and shot Captain Rogers.  Your diminished mental capacity was the reason you were exonerated.  And your treatment after the incident was harsh, and like I said, I’m sorry about that.  But if that sort of experience doesn’t drive doubt into your heart, I don’t know what would.”  He shook his head and smiled disarmingly.  “I don’t want there to be doubts between us, Agent Romanoff.  You’re among the best of the best around here, a true asset, just like Captain Rogers.  We can’t afford to lose you.  If people see you question yourself and your place here, it’ll cascade down.  Like waves it’ll ripple out, and suddenly a man doesn’t know who he can trust anymore.  I need to know I can trust you.”

Natasha shook her head.  “Is there something specific you want to ask me, sir?”

Pierce smiled.  “You’re as sharp as they say,” he commented.  He pushed himself off the railing and folded his arms across his chest, scrutinizing her.  “Yes, there is.  I want to know what Director Fury has you looking for on these missions you’ve been doing for him.”

 _So that’s what this is about._   A whisper of warning worked its way through Natasha’s brain as she tried to read Pierce.  “Why not ask Director Fury?”

His voice gained a harder edge, a commanding tone.  “I’m asking you.”

Her mind raced as she tried to figure out an answer.  She didn’t know exactly what Pierce wanted to know about these missions, and frankly there wasn’t much she could tell him, at any rate.  Even still, she didn’t want to divulge something she shouldn’t.  There was a chain of command for a reason, and if Pierce was bypassing Fury and coming to her, it meant the two were at odds at the very least.  At worst, Pierce had an agenda that was different from Fury’s, and maybe he was trying to find out where her loyalties truly were.  Maybe.  Or she could be reading into this too much.  It was difficult to know.  “They’re simple missions.  I go in, eliminate any resistance, hack into whatever computer system they have, steal what’s there, and get out.”

Pierce regarded her evenly, like he was trying to decipher what she wasn’t saying.  “Do you know what you’ve been stealing?” he asked.

Natasha shook her head.  “Fury told me not to look,” she said.  “Besides, the files have been encrypted.”

“Did he say why he’s been sending you?”

“No.”

Pierce smiled again.  “Just following orders,” he said.  She wasn’t sure if he wanted her to confirm that, so she stood still and said nothing further.  “These missions you’ve been doing haven’t been on the books.  There’s no record of them on the mainframe, no support personnel notified in Operations Control.  I only found out about them because Agent Barton mentioned you were gone.”  Natasha couldn’t help the wave of icy worry rolling up and down her back.  That wasn’t entirely unusual.  Fury was one for compartmentalizing information.  It was more disturbing that Pierce (or someone in Pierce’s office) was asking around.  And Clint probably hadn’t been aware the missions were supposed to be secret.  Hell, she hadn’t been aware of that.  Fury had never mentioned it.  She’d never really said anything to Clint, either, but he was smart and perceptive and had probably noticed she was gone.  He had been worried about her since the incident in Crimea, though he’d never come out and say it.

Something must have betrayed her surprise because Pierce came closer.  His eyes glimmered slightly with power and control.  “I want to know what Fury has you doing.  You have to admit that it’s a hell of a misallocation of valuable resources to be sending a spy of your caliber out around the world on some crusade for a needle in a haystack.”

Natasha gritted her teeth.  “Again, sir, you would have to ask him.”

Pierce pursed his lips slightly.  “Computer, halt,” he called.  The lift immediately stopped.  They were hundreds of feet off the ground, the beautiful summer day surrounding them outside the windows, the river sparkling beneath them.  From this distance, DC looked calm and peaceful.  “I’ll be honest with you, Agent Romanoff.  The World Security Council hasn’t been too happy with Director Fury of late.  There’s been a huge push to weaponize SHIELD as quickly and efficiently as possible.  After the Battle of New York, it became glaringly apparent that we are hopelessly outgunned against our enemies, both domestic and beyond.  We can’t rely on the Avengers to pop up and save the world every time it needs saving.  The fall-out from the Chitauri invasion was hard-felt, and the Council wanted a long-term, reliable solution to our problems that didn’t involve a band of misfits and outcasts barely working together and levelling half a city in the process.”

She couldn’t stand to stay quiet, both that he was downplaying the good the Avengers had done and blatantly ignoring that both she and Steve had played pivotal parts in doing it.  “With all due respect, Mr. Secretary, the Avengers saved the world.”

“Yes, they did.  But they almost didn’t.  You saw firsthand the damage that was done to New York.  It wasn’t acceptable.  And Nick Fury was one of the reasons the Avengers Initiative was green-lighted in the first place.  He pushed, and I got behind him.  I believed at the time that he was right.”  Pierce sighed slightly.  “Unfortunately, the time for heroes is past.  There are projects in motion, changes that are quickly coming to SHIELD and world security that the Council has been adamantly and impatiently pushing.  I thought Fury was onboard with their plans, but since the incident in Russia, he’s been… reluctant.  I know him too well not to see that he’s troubled.  He hasn’t been forthcoming with why, and, frankly, I need to know.  If there’s a problem, I need to know it now before it’s too late.”

Pierce’s voice had dropped to a quiet tone filled with what seemed to be genuine concern.  “I don’t know you that well, but I know that Fury trusts you.  And I know you trust him.  So if there’s something going on, I hope you’ll tell me.  I can’t go in front of the Council and defend my friend’s integrity if I don’t have all the facts.  And if he’s right and our plans for the future of SHIELD need to be delayed or canceled, I need hard evidence to present.  I don’t want the Council yanking him out of frustration.”  She hadn’t considered that.  It was easy to forget sometimes that Nick Fury, despite all his power and presence, was still beholden to higher forces.  And it seemed impossible that his position could be tenuous, but if it was…  “Computer, resume.”  The lift began to ascend the final few floors to the top of the Triskelion.  “So if you have any information regarding what’s bothering him, you need to tell me.”

Natasha didn’t know what to make of this.  She hadn’t heard of any specific projects, at least nothing of the size and breadth necessary to fundamentally alter SHIELD, but even she didn’t have full clearance.  And if there was some radical change coming, that might explain the unrest both she and Steve had noticed in the organization recently.  If Fury had doubts about something and he was choosing to slink around and investigate, it surely meant his concerns were serious.  And sensitive.  However, even if she wanted to divulge more information to Pierce, there really wasn’t anything to say.  All of the data she’d collected she already given directly to Fury.  She still had no idea what he was looking for.  “I’m sorry, but I really don’t know anything more.”

Pierce’s expression twisted in dismay for a moment, but it quickly softened in gratitude for her candor.  It was almost as if he thought they’d reached some sort of an understanding.  Natasha wasn’t at all sure of that or anything else.  The elevator came to a stop, and the computer chirped as the doors opened.  “Well, I appreciate you being honest with me, Agent Romanoff.  Here.”  He reached into his suit jacket and produced a business card.  He handed it to her.  “This is my private line.  It bypasses the SHIELD switchboards and even my secretaries and goes straight to me.  If Fury sends you out again, please contact me.  I don’t want to see him lose his position any more than you do.”  He smiled and nodded.  “Thank you.  We’ll be in touch.”

Natasha watched as he turned and walked down the gray marble hallway toward his office.  He turned the corner and was gone.  When the elevator doors closed again, she released a breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding and sagged against the wall.  She licked dry lips, glancing at the business card with Pierce’s name and private number, sweeping her thumb over the edge of it.  Then she stuffed it in her pants pocket and looked up at the ceiling.  “Detention level,” she weakly commanded.

The lift obediently went down, and she tried not to feel like she was falling.

* * *

The detention level was located in the basement of the Triskelion where the hope of escape was practically nil.  It was among the most secure locations in the complex, a long, cement hole that ran the length of it underground.  The only way out was up, and to get there one had to pass through numerous biometric scanners, security checkpoints, perimeter patrols, and armed guard stations.  The level was capable of immediate and full lockdown with only a voice command, sealing all interior doors and barring the elevators from access.  And even if one could get out, he would quickly find himself with the Potomac River between him and salvation.

Natasha exited the elevator and signed in at the first security checkpoint.  The scanners immediately detected her and logged her entry.  She pulled open the heavy door after the guards buzzed her through.  She nodded to the SHIELD agent on the other side.  “Garanin,” she said.

“In the holding pen,” the man said, hardly looking up from his pad.  Natasha walked quickly along the cement corridor where security cameras watched her every move.  They were situated every dozen feet or so on the ceiling.  She passed offices and conference areas for the agents permanently assigned to this location.  Then she turned the corner and reached the second security check point.  After that it was another few steps past interrogation rooms to the holding pen.

Clint stood outside.  At her approach, he dropped his arms from where they had been folded across his chest.  He didn’t look pleased.  “Where the hell have you been?”

She didn’t know what to say.  She trusted Clint completely; he was one of the few she did.  Her meeting a few minutes ago had left her riled and uncertain, and she knew he would offer up understanding, if not comfort, if she told him about it.  They’d been friends for as long as she had been with SHIELD, more than six years in fact.  Clint knew her in ways that no one else did, not even Steve.  He’d rescued her from her life as an assassin for Brushov, choosing to save her and bring her back to SHIELD rather than killing her as he’d been ordered to.  Since then, he’d been at her side, a constant in her life, quiet and calm and encouraging.  He had grounded her, supported her, kept her true to the new path she wanted to walk.  They were a lot alike, with difficult pasts soaked red with blood and stained with nightmares, and he’d always been able to steady her.  He’d put himself on the line for her so many times.  He’d even killed Brushov to spare her from falling back into her past.

They’d also been lovers from time to time when they’d both needed it and wanted it.  She wasn’t certain what Clint thought of her relationship with Steve.  He hadn’t mentioned it, and she hadn’t either, at least not since they’d gone after Brushov together.  Their friendship had been different since then, not necessarily strained but not as comfortable and easy as it always had been.  Natasha knew it wasn’t because Clint didn’t respect Steve or like him; the two of them had fought together plenty of times in the past as SHIELD agents and Avengers, so the marksman knew well what kind of man Steve was and respected him enough to follow his orders.  And even if Clint didn’t like Steve, he’d never dishonor her or embarrass her by questioning her choices.  But there was something.  Maybe hurt feelings or a touch of jealousy.  Maybe worry.  She was usually pretty adept at reading other people, and she knew Clint as well as anyone if not better, but she couldn’t figure this out.  And she definitely wasn’t going to ask him about it.  Their relationship had _never_ worked that way.  Steve was forthcoming, trusting, and open.  Clint was quiet, obtuse, and nonthreatening.

However, this wasn’t about Steve.  At least not entirely.  Nothing about her conversation with Pierce sat well with her, least of all the comments the Secretary had made about Fury.  Perhaps Clint would have more information.  He’d been rather distant these last few months, another victim in the Council’s dislike of the Avengers and rogue (or roguish) agents.  He could have heard something, since he’d been spending more time as an errand boy, as he put it, for Hill and Sitwell.  “Pierce wanted to talk to me,” she explained.

His brow furrowed in confusion and surprise.  “Pierce?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

As much as she might have wanted solace, she didn’t want to talk about this right now.  Not when she didn’t even have a handle on _what_ this was.  “I don’t know.  What does he want?” she asked with a tip of her head toward the observation window that gave them a view of the prisoner.

Clint crossed his arms over his chest again.  “Apparently to talk to you.  Says he has something to tell you that you’ll want to hear.”  He grunted darkly.  “Sounds like some bullshit excuse to jerk us around one last time.”

That was certainly possible.  Grigoriy Garanin was an ex-KGB agent they had taken prisoner during the Crimea incident.  He was a very influential person on the darker side of the world.  Known as “the Banker”, he had helped finance countless hostile regimes and villainous plots, including but not limited to arming terrorists, supporting illegal biochemical research, and funding Brushov’s attempt to flood the world with his insanity serum.  SHIELD had been squeezing information out of him over the last month, and despite his promise not to break he’d cooperated without too much trouble, supplying leads and information that had helped them track down some of dangerous men.  Natasha had suspected Garanin would roll fairly easily because he’d always been the sort to align himself with whoever had the most power and influence, hence his long and lucrative relationship with Brushov.  In this cell, buried under the Triskelion, SHIELD pretty much had a monopoly on power and influence.  Before she’d come to SHIELD, Garanin had often been in charge of paying her for her services as an assassin.  He was shrewd, cunning, and dangerously calm.

He was also a painful reminder of her past, and she hadn’t really seen him since they’d captured him.  The fact that he had specifically asked to speak to her meant he was probably more interested in toying with her than offering any further information.  But she couldn’t know that for sure.  And she was beyond this now.  He couldn’t threaten her with her past anymore.  “Alright,” she said, “let’s get this over with.”

She stepped inside of the room.  Garanin stood from the bed in the corner.  He was a wiry man with plain features, a hawkish nose, and balding salt and pepper hair.  He nodded at her.  _“_ _Zdravstvuyte, Chernaya vdova.”_

Natasha clasped her hands before her.  She pressed her lips together in a frown.  “You wanted to see me.”

“I wanted to say goodbye,” Garanin said matter-of-factly.  “This will be the last time we see each other.”

Natasha stared at him.  When he offered nothing further, she said, “Is that it?”

Garanin smiled.  He was soft-spoken, almost gentle, and that made him seem all that much more dangerous.  “Not entirely.  I also wanted to tell you that I know what your SHIELD Director is trying to find.”

Natasha hadn’t expected that.  She kept her alarm from her face.  Clint came up behind her.  “Other than a way to put assholes like you out of commission, I wasn’t aware he’s been looking for anything,” he said.

“Oh, yes, he is.  Desperately, no less.”  Garanin smiled a knowing smile that Natasha well remembered from her days as Brushov’s hired killer.  “He’s searching far and wide.  You know, don’t you?  He’s sent you on fruitless mission after fruitless mission.  He’s wasting time and energy.  He won’t find it.  Not like this.”

“Won’t find what?” Natasha asked tersely.  She’d about had it with playing games that day.  “What’s he looking for?”

“Insight,” Garanin supplied.

Clint’s face scrunched in distaste.  “What the hell is that?  Insight into what?”

Garanin’s smile turned more amused.  And more feral.  “You fools.  All of you.  I warned you when you took me that breaking me wouldn’t matter.  I warned you that there were shadows all around you, and the ones you refused to see where the most dangerous.  And yet here you are, still refusing to see them.”  He shook his head.  “Surely you remember that there’s darkness in the world even beyond what you are and what you were.  Darkness stronger than you, Agent Romanoff, and you, Agent Barton.  Darkness so crushing and cold that it’s heavier than the thickest ice of an endless winter.  Weapons that even you’re afraid of.”  Natasha’s heart thudded painfully in her chest.  She didn’t understand, but something told her she should have.  Something told her Garanin was being truthful.  Something told her this was about more than just toying with her.  “I know you are.  I’ve seen it.  And I see it in your eyes now.”

Obviously Clint thought this was turning out to be exactly what he had suspected.  Garanin was jerking them around one last time.  “He’s got nothing to say,” the archer said.  “We’re finished here.  Let’s go.”  Natasha had a harder time pulling herself away, but she did.

“Wait,” Garanin called.  The two SHIELD agents turned.

“What do you want?  I’m not interested in playing games.  If you have real information, we might be able to reduce your sentence or negotiate something,” Natasha coolly said.

“Negotiate?  What do you have that I could possibly want?” Garanin said incredulously.  He huffed an amused laugh.  “You’re sitting atop a house of cards and you don’t even realize it.  You have no power to stop what’s been put into motion.”

“And what’s that?” Clint asked.

“If you’re too foolish to see it for yourselves, then there’s no point in telling you,” the man answered.

“Bullshit,” Clint snapped.

Garanin shook his head.  “If you don’t believe me, look into your own history.  As I said, it’s there before you.  Look into something called Operation: Paperclip.”

“What’s that?” Clint asked shortly.

Natasha’s brow furrowed in confusion.  “Operation: Paperclip was SSR’s effort after World War II to recruit German scientists and officials who might have had strategic or research use,” she supplied.  Before she’d started living with Steve, she’d heard about the operation run by the then fledgling SHIELD leadership, but she’d read more about it incidentally from the files Steve had from the archives around his apartment.  There wasn’t much written about it save that it had been a huge endeavor that eventually spread from interests in Nazi Germany to the Russians and Japanese.  It was an attempt to prevent valuable resources from falling into obscurity or the hands of evil.  The potency of biomedical research had been rather fully realized with Doctor Abraham Erskine’s super soldier program, and SHIELD had made every effort to make sure the tools to build or recreate projects of that power stayed with the good guys.  And secrets had and always would be SHIELD’s most valuable currency.  Information, and the people capable of producing or spreading it, was coveted like nothing else.

But what the hell did Garanin mean, bringing this up?  “That’s seventy years in the past,” she said.  “What does it have to do with anything?”

“Things have their way of resurfacing and seeking their due,” Garanin said.  He smiled again, but this time it was remorseful.  “That is what I wanted to tell you.  And, no, I don’t want anything in return.  It’s too late for that now.  It’s too late to stop anything.”

“Stop what?  What’s going on that needs to be stopped?” Clint demanded.  Garanin said nothing.  He settled himself back down on the cot as if to indicate the conversation was over.  Clint grunted angrily.  He was not at all pleased.  “I figured you’d come at us with a bunch of bullshit.”

“Take it for what you will,” Garanin said.  It wasn’t clear if he was insulted.  He closed his eyes.  “You can never truly escape the mistakes of your past.  You know that better than anyone, Black Widow.”

Something must have shown on Natasha’s face because Clint was right there, protectively putting an end to this.  Her legs seemed to have stopped working and her mind was tumbling and spinning uselessly.  Clint surreptitiously nudged Natasha’s arm to get her walking toward the door.  “Right,” he said.  “Thanks for the tip.  Now shut the fuck up.  We’re finished.”

They were outside again a moment later.  Natasha had recovered herself somewhere between the door and where they now stood out in the corridor.  Clint regarded Garanin unhappily through the observation window of the cell.  He looked completely pissed off to have wasted his time.  Natasha wasn’t so sure.  Confusion left her muddled and even more unsettled.  “What do you think he meant by that?”

Clint sighed and shook his head.  “Who knows?  Nothing.  Jerking us around.”

“Why tell us now, though?  Why not before?”

He was irritated with even considering this.  “I don’t know, Nat, and I don’t care.  I’ve been waiting around all day to get this asshole moved.  Probably just figured his time was up and he wanted to get one last dig in.”

That didn’t satisfy her, even though it was entirely plausible.  After all, Garanin hadn’t told them anything terribly substantive.  “But how did he know that Fury’s been searching for something?”

“Lucky guess?  I don’t know.  He’s been locked up here with the interrogators for the past month.”  Natasha highly doubted any of SHIELD’s interrogation specialists would let any information spill to a prisoner that was this sensitive.  And she didn’t think anyone knew about her missions on Fury’s behalf.  Anyone aside from Pierce, apparently.  “ _Is_ Fury looking for something?” Clint asked.  He dropped his voice to a low murmur.  “What did Pierce want?”

“Have you heard about any major projects coming down the line?  Big enough to change SHIELD?”

He looked troubled.  “Change SHIELD?  How?”  She didn’t have an answer for that, so she said nothing.  That aggravated him further.  “What did Pierce want, Nat?”

Natasha shook her head.  “Nothing.”

“Nat–”

“Something’s up, Clint.”  She shook her head.  There was no evidence of that.  Not really, anyway.  She was suffering from hypervigilance, paranoia from her unfair treatment at the hands of the STRIKE Team after Crimea.  She was unsettled from nearly losing Steve and from his doubts.  This wasn’t like her.  Maybe she really was compromised because of her feelings.  Too confused and too wrapped up in them.  “Or not.  God.  I’m jumping at shadows.”

“That’s just because of what he said,” Clint replied.  “Evil bastard.  Don’t let it get to you.”

She nodded, but that didn’t make her feel any better.  Clint dropped his hand to her shoulder comfortingly and summoned up a bit of a smile for her sake.  “Alright, I need to get him out of here.  The Feds are waiting to pick him up at Reagan.”  He walked down the hall, calling to the guards and the agents on duty to get things prepared to transport Garanin from SHIELD custody.

Natasha watched him leave, feeling increasingly disgusted at her own thoughts.  She glanced back in the cell to see Garanin lying down on the cot, his hands folded peacefully across his chest.  He was sleeping (or pretending to sleep), but he looked like he was dead.  Like he really couldn’t care less about what remained of his life.  Like it really was too late to stop whatever he thought was coming.  Clint was probably right; the man was just looking to get them riled up over nothing.  Still…  She pulled her phone from her pocket and started a text message to Steve.  _“Ask Carter about Operation: Paperclip,”_ she typed.  After sending that message, she lingered a moment, wanting more.  Wanting to let him know that she was as uncertain as he was and that she needed his support.  Wanting his strength.  Wanting him to come back for her.  Desperately wanting to tell him she loved him.

But she didn’t dare.  Pierce was right.  Someone was always watching.  _“Need to see you tonight,”_ she finally wrote.  It wasn’t what she wanted to say, but she hoped Steve would somehow read between the lines.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Zdravstvuyte, Chernaya vdova._ – Hello, Black Widow.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Herein we have some angsty fluff (or fluffy angst? – not sure which), some sexy times (had to throw that in there while I could – read at your own discretion :-)), and some semblance of plot. Enjoy!

Steve hated admitting it to himself, but it was becoming increasingly difficult to see Peggy.  This time he was finding it particularly distressing, and that had led him to where he currently was, sitting nervously on his bike outside the nursing home.  It wasn’t the fact that he was with Natasha now that made it so miserable (at least, not entirely).  Peggy had always wished for him to find someone in the future, and she’d made it clear to him (almost every time they’d met over the last year or so in fact) that she wanted him to move on and be happy.  Now that he’d finally done it, he sincerely doubted she’d be upset with him about it, although honestly a tiny part of him feared shame over some sense of betrayal.  He knew that was his hang-up rather than hers, but it was hard to shake it no matter how self-inflicted and irrational it was.

More than that, though, was the fact that every time he saw Peggy, less and less of her was there.  He’d made a consistent effort to visit her every week or so before the mission to Crimea, and he’d begun to notice that she wasn’t the same as she had been a few months back.  When he’d gone to see her last week to tell her about Natasha and what had happened, it had been even worse, so much so that he hadn’t even stepped into her room.  He’d meant to, but he’d caught sight of Peggy arguing with her daughter and a nurse, insisting that her husband was still alive.  He’d died years ago, and she was terrified and firmly in denial, ardently refusing to listen to reason and demanding that she’d be taken to him.  Maybe it had been cowardly to just slip in and out unnoticed, but Steve was only so strong, and seeing her like that was terrible.  One moment she was there, as smart and sly and beautiful as she always had been.  The next, with a breath or a blink of an eye, she was gone, lost in a memory or delirious, confused and sometimes agitated.  That was the worst, to watch her agile mind that had saved his life on the battlefield with her cleverness, coordination, and quick thinking suddenly vanish and leave behind only raw, unhinged emotions that were extremely difficult to reconcile with the image of Peggy he had from what was to him only a year ago.  She was fading, dying, a withered husk of who she had been, and he was afraid.  He was afraid his presence would upset her now, throw her out of reality, and he was afraid to see her coming apart again.

Still, it wasn’t right staying away like this.  Peggy deserved his company.  Back before the dementia had worsened, her eyes had always had so much light in them when he stopped by.  She enjoyed having him close, enjoyed reliving old memories (although for him they weren’t nearly so old), enjoyed the comfort he brought her in the twilight of her life.  It was cowardly and selfish to deny her that.

But he just couldn’t make himself go inside.  He was lost and unsettled, had been for the last few days since Natasha had gone away on the missions for Fury.  Without Natasha there to ground him, he felt useless.  Uncertain.  He heaved a sigh and tipped his head back, looking up at the puffy, white clouds sweeping across the cerulean sky and feeling the breeze brush over him.  This was pathetic.  He owed Peggy more than this.  He got up off his bike and headed toward the door of the nursing home.  On his way there, his phone buzzed in his pocket, and he fished it out.  There were two text messages from Natasha.  One was a request that he ask Peggy about something called Operation: Paperclip.  He didn’t know what that was, but it was undoubtedly something concerning SHIELD.  Along with Howard Stark and Chester Phillips, Steve’s old CO from SSR, Peggy had founded SHIELD and acted as its inaugural Director for decades.  Why would Natasha want to pick Peggy’s brain about something like that?  Peggy had been retired for years, so whatever it was, it couldn’t be recent.

There was another message.  _“Need to see you tonight.”_   Steve winced a little reading it.  Natasha never admitted things like that.  He knew she wanted and needed him.  But she only ever said it jokingly because he also knew the strength of her desires and insecurities frightened her.  These were newfound things for her, and he respected that.  He’d seen her at her lowest, and he knew she trusted him implicitly.  She wasn’t open about her feelings (or much of anything, at least not easily), but she was trying to be more so.  Somehow those words on the screen of his phone weren’t just her teasing or enticing him.  That was almost enough for him to forego visiting Peggy and hop back on his bike and return to the Triskelion as fast as he could drive.  But he didn’t.  One of the things that bothered her about him was his protectiveness.  It was who he was; even before becoming Captain America, he’d fought for those being harassed or bullied or insulted, for _anyone_ who’d needed help, simply because it was the right thing to do.  But doing the right thing was trickier with Natasha because she didn’t require his protection.  She was more than capable of handling herself, and even the slightest intimation that she couldn’t was grounds for contention between them.  She was strong, beautiful, and dangerously intelligent, an expert martial artist no less, and she was world-wise in a way that he knew he’d never be.  She’d been livid with him during their mission in Crimea for implying she couldn’t manage the situation on her own and for constantly trying to protect her.  They’d argued (once a week or so ago, and it had been damn painful) about how stupid he’d been to go after her with his back broken and beat to all hell when he could have waited for help.  But he couldn’t let her be hurt.  She’d suffered enough, and he’d damn well do whatever it took to prevent anything terrible happening to her again.  They hadn’t agreed about it, choosing instead to just let it go and not talk about it again.  He respected her, as much as if not more than he respected Peggy for what she’d accomplished, and respecting her meant trusting her decisions.  The last few years of his life had been entirely about everyone needing Captain America, and it was taking him some time to adjust to her needing Steve Rogers.  It was not so much that he couldn’t be what she wanted, but it was difficult sometimes to turn off everything else, especially his drive to keep her safe.

So he kept walking and made himself have faith that whatever the problem was, she could handle it.

Inside the lobby of the nursing home, the lady at the front desk smiled at him.  “Good afternoon, Captain,” she said brightly.  He’d been there enough that most everyone knew him.  “How are you?”

“Good.  Yourself?”

“Fine, thanks.  She’s free, if you want to go back.  It’s been a good day today.”  Steve could hardly describe the relief he felt at that.  He managed to nod and smile before heading down the polished corridors that were filled with art and flowers.  This was truly a nice place, beautifully decorated, immaculately clean, and equipped with private, spacious rooms that put any hospital in which he’d ever been to shame.  Peggy was receiving excellent care.  He was grateful for that.

His sneakers squeaked slightly on the floor as he slowed.  Peggy’s daughter, a lovely, older woman named Hannah, greeted him with a relieved and surprised grin as she exited Peggy’s room, closing the door behind her.  “Well, hi,” she said warmly. “Where have you been?”

Steve didn’t think Peggy’s family entirely knew what he did for a living, though they were well aware he was Captain America and that Peggy had been head of SHIELD.  And he wasn’t about to burden them with the truth of what had happened over the last couple of months or why he hadn’t come.  “I’ve been on assignment,” he said simply.

Hannah pulled him into a quick, friendly hug, patting his back.  She was sweet and tender but quick with her tongue, and when Steve looked into her eyes he saw her mother.  “SHIELD has a seemingly limitless capacity to cause collateral damage and not care one bit about it,” she said bluntly, and he figured she must be speaking from experience.  “I haven’t seen Sharon in ages.  Do you ever work with her?”

Steve couldn’t control his surprise.  “Sharon?  No.  No, I don’t.  I haven’t.”  He couldn’t quite grasp what she was saying, although it should have been fairly obvious.  “I wasn’t aware anyone from your family was part of SHIELD now.  Is she your daughter?”

Hannah shook her head with a little laugh.  “No, thank the Lord.  Mum’s brother’s granddaughter, actually.”

He supposed it made sense, though he hadn’t known Peggy had had siblings.  Peggy was a natural leader, gifted, confident, and articulate, and surely she’d inspired her family to follow in her footsteps.  Still, it was somehow unnerving that some small piece of Peggy had been this close to him all this time and he hadn’t even known it.  Then again, SHIELD was huge and enjoyed its secrets; there was no reason to suspect this Sharon was stationed anywhere around him.  “Where does she work?  Here in DC?”

“Darling, I vowed once to never involve myself in SHIELD business,” Hannah said, not unkindly but completely dismissively, “and I have no intention of breaking it.”  She smiled at him again.  “If you do happen to see her, tell her to call her mother every once in a while.  She worries.”  Steve was about to argue that he didn’t know this girl, so it was going to be a tad difficult to pass on a message (which he had no business passing on, anyway), but Hannah moved on before he could.  “Well, I’m glad you’re home safe,” she said with genuine appreciation.  “Mum’s been lonely without you.”  Steve nodded, trying not to acknowledge the twinge of pain in his chest at that.  “You’ll stay with her for a while?  I need to be going.”

“Yeah, it’s no problem.  Nice to see you.”

Hannah nodded and looped the strap of her purse over her shoulder.  “You too, Captain.”  When she was gone, Steve turned and grasped the knob to Peggy’s room.  Then he hesitated again, trying to work up some measure of courage to embrace what he knew was inside.  Whenever things had gotten tough over the last weeks as he’d recovered from his injuries, he’d taken to reminding himself that he was Captain America and he could take it.  That was what Bucky used to tell him back during the war after a hellish mission or a battle that never ended or getting shot (which he had, more than he cared to remember).  _“You’re Captain America, you punk.  You can take it.  Man up.”_   Natasha was right; he’d been spending much too much time wool-gathering and getting maudlin over the past, brooding like Nat had said.  Annoyed with himself, he opened the door and stepped inside.

Peggy was laying the same bed she’d been in every time he’d been to see her.  The bed was slightly inclined, and a light, taupe blanket covered her to her waist.  Her thick, white hair was messily fanned out over the pillows.  Surrounding her was a dresser and a movable table cluttered with pill bottles, a pitcher of water, a few glasses, and tissues.  Books and reading glasses rested atop the nightstand flanking the bed, and there was an abundance of pictures of Peggy with her family.  Steve saw her eyes were closed, her breast rising and falling slowly with deep and even breaths.  She was sleeping, so he turned to leave.

“Steve?”  Her soft call immediately stilled him, and he turned and offered her a soft smile.  Brown eyes that weren’t quite focused but still so sharply reminded him of her blinked blearily.  “Steve?  Is that you?”

“Hi, Peg,” he said softly.  He walked to the bed, smiling wider in spite of the ocean of discomfort and grief churning in his stomach.

She was watching him, but there was a certain vacancy to her eyes that gave him pause.  “Steve…”

“Yeah, it’s me.”  He managed to make his smile brighter and more confident.  “Can I sit with you?”  He didn’t wait for her response, sliding into the familiar chair beside her bed.

That dark emptiness in her eyes faded.  “You’re here?”

He wasn’t sure what she meant, if she was grounded in this time or floating in the mists of her memories.  This wasn’t the first occasion she’d been confused about him, like seeing him, so clearly a picture from her past, dragged her back down into dementia.  Still, he kept his smile strong and unbothered as he reached for her hand.  It was gnarled and spotted with age, the skin so papery thin under his.  Her fingers were so weak, not at all the strong, capable ones that had scribbled orders and notes and directed SSR’s resources and dressed his wounds in secret so the troops wouldn’t see him hurt and grabbed his uniform to pull him in for a kiss.  He couldn’t tear his eyes away from them for a second before he placed his other hand over hers and nodded at her.  “Yeah.  I’m here.”

“Where did you go?” she asked.  “It seems like it’s been such a long time.”

“I was out on a mission,” he said, “for SHIELD.  Sorry it took so long.”

She smiled at him, thin lips pulled tautly upon an emaciated face.  “Still such a good soldier,” she commented.  There must have been something in his voice, or maybe his eyes dipped or his breath caught just so slightly, but whatever it was, she noticed it immediately.  She stared at him, watching him with eyes that at this moment were nothing short of knowing and wise.  She was still so perceptive.  “What happened?  Were you hurt?”

Part of him didn’t want to trouble her with it.  There was no sense in burdening her with the truth of how close he’d come to losing his life.  Another part of him wanted her comfort.  Even with Natasha’s care and love, something inside him ached for validation that what he’d done to himself on SHIELD’s behalf had been worth it.  Peggy was one of the reasons he’d joined SHIELD in the first place, and she was one of the reasons he stayed.  One of the reasons he was trying to maintain his faith.  He heard himself speaking before he decided what to say.  “I’m alright now.”

“No, you’re not.  I can see it in your eyes.  What happened?”

He winced a little, averting his gaze to watch his thumb sweep over the bony ridges of her knuckles.  “Nothing.  Just…”  It was too hard to tell her about how his body had been so badly broken.  His mind went to something infinitely more pleasant because as nervous as he was about telling her about Natasha, deep down he knew she’d be thrilled to hear the truth.  “I fell in love with someone.”

Peggy’s wide grin cut through the cold in his chest.  Her eyes filled with what he knew was relief.  “And that’s got you so melodramatic?”

He couldn’t help but smile himself, ashamed of his mood.  This persistent, self-indulgent malaise of the past couple of weeks was really starting to irk him.  He wondered how much longer he’d be able to put up with it.  If Secretary Pierce was true to his word, it wouldn’t be much longer.  Maybe.  “No, no.  It’s not that.”

Her eyes hardened in true concern.  Now she patted his hand with her other, her touch soft but still somehow strong.  “Then what is it?”

He faltered, uncertain of how to explain it because he was uncertain of the explanation.  He wasn’t even certain that what he was feeling was warranted or grounded in anything except those long, dark hours he’d spent alone in recovery after being so badly wounded.  SHIELD had used and abused him, plain and simple.  “It’s been like coming back from the ice these last couple of weeks.  I know I should pick myself up and get back in the game, do what I can to protect people and serve, but part of me doesn’t want to.”  He shook his head a little.  “I guess I’m tired, Peggy.”

“You saved the world, Steve.  You should be happy.”

“I know.  And I’m happy.  Really happy.  The woman I found…”  He smiled, a tad embarrassed.  “She reminds me a lot of you.  But it’s so much more than that.  I love her.  I feel like she’s the only thing that I know is worth fighting for now.  The only good thing.  If it hadn’t been for her, I don’t think I would’ve been okay after what happened.”

Peggy smiled wearily.  “Then thank her for me,” she said, “for taking care of you.  For being what I couldn’t be for you.”

Something inside Steve ached miserably and unexpectedly at that.  He still loved Peggy.  Nothing would ever change that.  Not seventy years or the life she’d lived without him.  Not his life now or even Natasha.  A part of him would always belong to her.  He stood and leaned closer, pressing his lips to her forehead.  “You were everything I wanted.  If I hadn’t…”

She hushed him, reaching up to grasp his face between her weathered hands.  “It’s alright.  You deserve to live your life.  The last thing I’d ever want is to see you throw that away, grieving for something that can’t ever be.  Things happen for a reason.”

“You never used to believe that,” Steve said.  “You always told me to fight.”

She let him go, taking his hands again instead.  “That was before I lost you.”

He could barely stand to hear that.  It wasn’t spoken with regret, really.  Peggy had loved her husband dearly.  She loved her family.  She’d made a wonderful life for herself, full of accomplishment and fulfillment.  But it was at its end now, and when she was this aware, she knew it.  Steve sank back into his chair helplessly.  Again their hands were linked, and he stared at them.  “I wish I could’ve given you that dance,” he whispered.

Peggy shook her head.  “Give it to her.  You’ve found the right partner.”  Steve grimaced at that, not because it wasn’t true, but because it was.  It was and the woman he should have had if he hadn’t been lost in the ice was telling him to move on.  She’d told him before, both with her voice and in the letters she’d written for him, but this time it seemed more real.  Inescapable.  “I’m glad,” Peggy said.  Her voice was nothing more than a whisper of air.  She appeared so weak and frail, gone from him so far that he could barely recognize her.  “I’m so glad.”

They didn’t speak again for a while.  Steve thought about asking her about this Operation: Paperclip.  He knew that he should, but Peggy seemed so contented as she lay there that he couldn’t bring himself to bother her.  And he felt so absolved and relaxed in her presence that he didn’t want to think about anything outside of this moment and their tenuous, fading connection.  He wanted to appreciate what remained of her, the fact that she was still so strong.  So beautiful.  And so capable of telling him exactly what he needed to hear.  She’d always done that for him, and he was grateful.  When Peggy’s eyes closed and a small shiver wracked down her slight frame, he let her hands go and stood to get another blanket from the dresser near the window.  He unfurled it and draped it over her.  “Steve?” she whispered suddenly.  Her eyes were open, but they weren’t seeing the world correctly.  She wasn’t seeing him again.  “Steve?”

He knew right away that that wonderful moment was gone.  She was gone with it.  It hurt, but he could hide it.  He smiled as he leaned over her, drawing the colorful quilt up her body.  “I’m right here.”

“Steve?”  She grabbed his hand and pulled it to her face, brushing the backs of his fingers to her sallow cheek.  She hadn’t heard him or understood him.  It didn’t matter which because they both hurt.  “You’re here?”

“Of course.”

She closed her eyes again, basking in his presence, in so many memories, and she held tight to his hand like she had the power to keep him there.  Right then she did.  “The war’s over?”

His eyes stung.  He couldn’t help it.  “It’s over.”

She wilted before him in relief.  “And we’re together.”

He couldn’t make himself answer, to speak at all given the tight, painful knot in his throat.  He stood rigidly as she nuzzled her cheek into his palm and slid her bent fingers through his, his which were still as young, strong, and capable as they always had been.  Thankfully, as the seconds slipped away, he didn’t have to say anything.  She fell asleep like that, warm and comfortable, and he stayed with her as long as he could.

* * *

Steve stopped at the VA before heading home.  He wasn’t ready to get his mind back where it needed to be, back in this time and this place, so he wanted the distraction of a new experience with new people.  The simple act of walking into the large, well-kept building was somehow soothing.  The girl at the front desk was as pretty as Sam had claimed with gorgeous eyes and an enchanting smile that she flashed at Steve the minute he pushed open the doors and stepped inside.  If she knew who he was, she didn’t say anything, a fact for which he was infinitely grateful.  The place felt familiar somehow, though he’d never been there before, and he quickly realized why as he walked down the main hallway and looked over the posters and pictures adorning the cream-colored walls.  This was the Veteran’s Association, dedicated to serving soldiers.  Sometimes it was easy to forget that that was what he was: a soldier.  Someone who’d served his country during a time of war, who’d sacrificed for his nation, who’d died to save it.  Operating as a SHIELD agent was perhaps the most efficient and powerful way to protect world security nowadays, but it wasn’t honorable like this was.

He wandered his way into Sam’s meeting.  He was standing in front of a room full of vets, vets who were suffering with nightmares and survivor’s guilt and PTSD.  For the first time in a long time, he felt like he was on equal footing, like he belonged.  He listened to them talk about terrors and hallucinating IEDs and being haunted by the ghosts of those they’d lost.  He listened to Sam talk about carrying the burdens, about keeping them under control and working through them.  His calm words rang true with the room and with Steve.  Afterwards, it was nice to just speak with Sam.  Sam was a nice guy, a decent and genuine guy, and Steve hit it off with him right away.  He was easy-going and simple and sincere.  He smiled because he meant it.  He was straight-forward.  It was refreshing to deal with someone more like him, someone with whom Steve knew where he stood.  Sam put him at ease, and Steve couldn’t help but confess that he was uncertain, that maybe he wanted out of this dangerous and difficult life he led where everything was gray, complex, and muddled.  It was damn alluring, seeing Sam comfortable, calm, and at peace with himself.  Maybe that was what had brought all of this to a head in the first place.  And Sam sensed it.  He made everything seem simple and easy.  _Just get out and do what you want to do._   He couldn’t.  He was Captain America.  But more than that, he was in love with Natasha, and he meant what he’d said to her about staying with SHIELD to stay with her.

Still, he felt better and more grounded after seeing Sam.  They’d parted with a smile and an amiable handshake and a promise to meet up again soon.  Natasha was right about it; it felt nice to have a friend, to have someone to whom he could relate outside of SHIELD.

He drove home as the sun was setting over DC.  It was pretty spectacular, he thought as he parked his bike.  Natasha’s Corvette was in the spot she normally used, but the lights weren’t on in his apartment so she probably wasn’t back yet.  He went for a walk, enjoying the calm evening, listening to the kids playing across the street in the park and people chatting as they strolled down the sidewalk.  He didn’t think for a while, and it was nice because he’d frankly gotten pretty weary of his thoughts these last weeks.  He just watched the sun sink below the horizon, spilling oranges and yellows and reds across the sky.  He liked being outside a lot; even if people were constantly attached to their cellphones and tablets, it was still much quieter and simpler than the busy rush of life elsewhere where technology constantly invaded everything and dictated the nature of the most mundane of human interactions.  He sat on a park bench until the sun finally dipped below the tree line and everything was hazy and gray with dusk.  Just as he was about to leave, his phone rang.  He answered it, and when he was done talking, he walked back quickly and felt even better seeing the lights on his bedroom from the street below.  All his doubts vanished so completely in relief that for the first time in weeks he felt sure of himself.

The door to his place was unlocked.  “Hey, you here?” he called, closing it behind him.  He could barely keep the excitement from his tone as he looked around his living room.  It was empty, and a few steps deeper inside revealed the kitchen to be equally so.  “Nat?”

She came out of his bedroom, dressed in a comfortable pair of gray sweatpants and a navy blue hoodie.  Steve smiled broadly at her.  “Just got a call from Pierce’s secretary.  I’m back in.”

Her face was stony.  It wasn’t angry or sad, per se, but stiff and unreadable.  He knew that expression.  She always wore it when something bothered her, like the absence of visible emotion was a convincing mask to hide that she was upset.  It was to other people, but not to him.  “From Pierce and not Fury?” she questioned.

Steve’s brow creased in confusion.  He supposed that was odd and probably signified Fury wasn’t on board with him returning to active duty (or maybe he didn’t even know about it), but he wasn’t about to look a gift horse in the mouth.  “Yeah.”

“When?” she asked.

“Tomorrow morning,” he said, “0900.”  She nodded.  Still she was blank.  Steve sighed, not understanding.  “I didn’t expect the Hallelujah Choir, but a little happiness would have been nice.”

“Did you talk to Carter about Operation: Paperclip?”

Something was _really_ bothering her. She stepped past him without touching him and headed to the kitchen.  He frowned, shucking his leather jacket and setting it to the back of his sofa as he followed her.  Natasha collected a glass from the cabinet and filled it with filtered water from the fridge.  “No.  Sorry.  She, uh…  She wasn’t all there today, Nat.  And I didn’t want to upset her.”  Natasha wasn’t angry.  She stood with her back to him against the kitchen counter.  He could see the lines of tension in her body under her loose clothes.  They were obvious to his eyes.  Obvious and worrying.  “What’s Operation: Paperclip?”  She didn’t answer.  Steve waited in uncertainty and worry for another moment as she stayed still.  When the distant between them became too burdensome, he walked up behind her and slid his arms around her, pulling her against his chest, trapping her against him.  “What’s the matter?” he murmured against her ear.  She still didn’t answer, but he could feel her relax a little.  He tightened his grasp, pressing his face into the top of her head and breathing in deeply the scent of vanilla and whatever else was in her shampoo.  “I shouldn’t have unloaded on you like that this morning.  I’m sorry.”

“It’s not that,” she finally said.  She set the glass to the counter and finally leaned into his embrace.  Steve waited for a moment.  He knew not to push her.  He could be patient.  Eventually she slid out from his arms.  He didn’t try to stop her.  “Garanin got to me today.”

It was said softly and with some shame, like a confession.  Given all her talent and experience as an agent, it was.  Steve didn’t like the sound of it.  Maybe it was just because of their shared experiences in Crimea, but he’d become overly sensitive to anything and everything to do with her past.  “Got to you?  How?”

Natasha looked like she wanted to say more, but she didn’t.  He didn’t press.  Instead he gathered her in his arms again, lowering his lips to the top of her head.  She melted against him, all the tension and stress leaving her as he massaged her shoulders.  They stood still for a long moment.  “Would you do something for me?” he asked.  He felt stupid and nervous (and embarrassed, though he couldn’t rightly say why) and tried to calm the fast-paced flutter of his heart in his chest.  It took another moment for him to manage the courage to ask what he wanted to ask.  “Would you dance with me?”

She pulled back, surprise etched all over her face.  “What?”

There was a lot more to this than she knew.  He didn’t want to tell her because it hurt too much.  But he felt like he owed this to himself, and he owed it to Peggy.  “I’ve never danced.  I don’t even know how.  Would you teach me?”

“Steve, I–”

“Please.  Right now.  I want to dance with you.”  He really hoped she didn’t make him ask again or beg her, because he knew he didn’t have the emotional fortitude to do it.  He already felt awkward and stupid enough.  This wasn’t the sort of thing they did.  Something told him this wasn’t the sort of thing _anybody_ did anymore.

She stared into his eyes like she was trying to understand.  He didn’t want to explain it.  Thankfully, she sensed that.  “Okay.”  She smiled, and suddenly the flirtatious woman that drove him mad with yearning was back.  “Don’t you dare step on my feet, though.”  She headed over to the living room where the stereo was.  Steve watched her, amazed anew at how quickly and efficiently she changed herself to suit his needs.  It was unsettling sometimes, like he never really saw or knew who she was underneath it all, but that was only his own insecurity rattling him.  Of course he knew her.

“And don’t expect anything fancy.  You’ve seen how people dance now,” she called.  He had, and like so much else of the future, it was shameless.  He followed her into the living room.  She was picking through his music, shooting a sly look at him from the corner of her eye.  “Unless you want me to teach you how to dance like that.”

He smiled at her.  “Maybe.”

“Don’t you have any music from this century?”

“Music from this century isn’t music.  It’s just noise.  And loud.”

“You have no idea how much of an old man cliché that is, do you,” she said, grinning at him.  He was so relieved she was doing this and feeling better herself.  “Do yourself a favor and never say that to anyone younger than – how old are you now?”

“Twenty-nine.”

“Funny.”  She finally succeeded in getting the stereo turned on.  The swell of horns and swish of cymbals filled the apartment as “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” began to play.  He must have left the record in the player from the last time he’d used it.  Natasha straightened and looked at him over her shoulder.  “Your dance, your song,” she explained.  Then she sashayed closer and stepped against him.  She grabbed his right hand in hers.  “Arm around me.”  He did, sliding it along her lower back.  Hers she wrapped across his shoulders and behind his neck.  Kitty Kallen’s sultry voice slipped over them as Natasha pulled him into a gentle sway, guiding him into slow and easy steps.  There wasn’t much room in his living room, with the couch right behind them and the coffee table in the way, but they managed.  And the world steadily fell away.  All of its doubts and troubles and pains.  She smiled at him.  “You’re not half bad at this.”

“It’s easy with the right partner,” he said with a small smile.

She lowered her head to his shoulder.  He tightened his grip, sliding his fingers through hers in a tender caress and sinking deeper into the moment, into the feel of the music ebbing and flowing and her body against his.  “So your first dance, huh.  Never got around to it back in the day?”

“No,” he said.

She read into what he didn’t say.  “What brought this on?” she asked quietly.

He drew a deep breath, dropping her hand to grasp her hips.  She joined her freed hand with her other behind his neck.  “I don’t know,” he said.  “I guess I realized it’s not fair of me to be asking you to let go of your past when I haven’t let go of mine.”  That was really what it was about, when he considered it.  It wasn’t just Peggy or Bucky or the soldiers meeting at the VA to discuss the horrors they’d survived and how to move on from it.  It wasn’t just the Smithsonian opening their exhibit on him, like the life he’d led was nothing more than a museum display filled with still photos and old footage and memorabilia.  It wasn’t just that he still floundered in the future sometimes, that SHIELD had grounded him and given him purpose, too, purpose that seemed to be crumbling beneath his feet.  It was all of that.  It was the weight of everything he’d lost pushing upon him.  His shattered faith in SHIELD had rattled him, brought the pain with which he’d thought he’d come to terms back with a vengeance.  And having Natasha leave him to return to an organization that had shut him out had hurt more than he’d admitted.  He smiled against the top of her head.  “I think that I think too much.”

“Yes, you do,” she said.  She pulled his face down to kiss him.  The song played on, and they swayed slowly to it, kissing tenderly.  Eventually it ended, but the moment didn’t.  Natasha’s hands found their way up his back under his shirt and her mouth got more passionate, more demanding.  Steve groaned into the next devouring kiss, her tongue slipping along his teeth as her hands decided to journey down rather than up.  Exploring fingers slipped beneath his belt and jeans.  “It’s been a rough day, so I think we should do something that requires no thought at all.”

“That’s awful,” he said, but when she grabbed his rear, he’d had it with restraint.  He lifted her against him, staggering over to the couch.  The zipper of her hoodie was somehow ridiculously difficult to get a hold of, but when he did, he yanked it down.  She tossed it aside before shoving him onto the sofa. 

“I did promise you,” she said, her voice deep and husky with desire.  She knelt between his legs, her capable fingers swiftly attacking his belt and the button and fly of his jeans.  He was already straining in his pants, aching with need, and she was about to bring that to a fever pitch. 

“You did,” he breathed.  “But don’t make me wait.”  He groaned, doubtful that he could take it now.  He shuddered back into the couch under her feathery light caress.  “And don’t tease me.”

“You like it when I tease you,” she said, pressing a kiss to his stomach.

Steve grunted and tried to think.  He failed.  “I do,” he said dumbly.

“You do.”  She smiled mischievously up at him, that coy little smirk that she always had when she was wrapping him around her fingers.  She was the only one who could do this to him, drive every rational thought out of his head and leave him drowning in desire.  She hooked her thumbs into the belt loops of his jeans and yanked them down from his hips.  Next she rid him of his underwear.  He could hardly stand the pressure of her mouth on him, purposeful and so painfully _good._   She brought him right to the brink with her knowing hands and lips and tongue and held him there until he couldn’t stand it anymore.

“Get up here,” he ordered, reaching down for her and grabbing her arms and pulling her onto his lap.  His frantic hands reached for the tank top she had on.  After pulling it over her head, he kissed her frantically, teeth and tongue and hot and needy, and scrambled at her bra.  That fell to the floor.  He grabbed her hips insistently, pulling at her panties stubbornly and clumsily until she was naked and straddling his hips.  He buried his face into her breasts, kissing and sucking, grabbing her waist with one hand to keep her from escaping him.  The other slipped between her thighs.  He wrested lusty moans and breathless whimpers and short pants from her lips.  Together they lowered her onto him and brought him inside her.  He snatched her hips and held her still for a moment, trying to catch his breath and wait.  It was all he could do to hang on.  “Nat…”

She leaned over him, slanting her lips over his possessively and pressing herself down harder over him.  As he tossed his head back, she trailed her mouth down his jaw and the column of his throat, suckling at the pounding of his pulse.  She grabbed his hands at her hips and curled their fingers together on the back of the couch around his head.  God, she was beautiful.  Silky heat and fire that leaned over him.  Watching ecstasy wash over her face was amazing.  She moved, slowly, _painfully_ slowly, teasing him still with a grin that was now sloppy and eyes that were a little dazed but wild.  Steve reached up to brush her hair from her face and pull her down for another kiss, wet and deep and wanton.  “You really do love torturing me,” he said into her mouth.

She only managed something like a satisfied whine.  She was losing control, her fists balled into his t-shirt and her back arching.  Steve caught her against him, dragging his mouth up her chest to her shoulder and steadying her.  He smiled against her, sinking his teeth lightly into her clavicle.  Every brush of her skin to his was electrifying, and he could feel her heart thundering and her breath hitching into his hair.  “Steve…” she whispered.

He knew what she wanted.  Everything he knew at all about this she’d taught him, and he was a good student, if he did think so himself.  He held her as he shifted them both to the left, laying her on the couch and not for a second losing contact.  Clumsily he kicked at his shoes to get them off.  She twisted herself and squirmed desperately beneath him to get him going, to get him deeper.  She clawed at his shirt and yanked it over his head.  A flurry of kisses was planted down his chest, her mouth nipping impatiently.  “I know, love.  Just let me–”

“ _Steve, now._ ”  He finally got his shoes off and his pants down so he could actually move.  And he did move, hard and fast.  Some small part of him always clung to the fact that he was too strong, so much stronger than her, and that he needed to be careful.  He hung onto that one coherent thought even as everything grew hazy with heat and white with a driving desire to find release.  It didn’t last much longer because he was finding it, tantalizing and so close.  She tightened around him, drawing him deeper, whimpering into his ear and digging her nails into his back, and that was enough to send him over the edge.  The world exploded and all he could do was breathe through it and feel it and enjoy it.  It was like nothing else.  She was like nothing else.

Steve came down slowly.  Natasha swallowed his low groan into her mouth, her tender kiss grounding him while he floated and drifted and shivered.  She wrapped her legs around his hips as he sank onto her, sliding the flats of her palms up and down his back.  It took a long time before Steve could manage much beyond laying there.  Then he grunted a laugh into her shoulder, breathing heavily and entirely content to never move again.  “You’re gonna be the death of me,” he slurred.  Lazily he kissed her temple.  “It’ll be a good way to go.”

She stiffened.  He barely noticed it, but it was enough to cut through the pleasant fog in his head.  He shifted down her body a little, her knees clamping around his torso to stop him, but now he could see her.  “Nat?”  Natasha didn’t let him lean up.  He could have easily broken away, but he didn’t.  Her hands were tight in his hair, keeping his head against her chest.  Steve couldn’t help the concern fanning over him.  It was cold and uncomfortable.  “Talk to me.  What’s the matter?”

“Promise me something,” she said.  The words were softly spoken, hardly more than a whisper, but they were incredibly loud.  Steve was suddenly acutely aware of every part of her.  Her gentle breaths.  The smoothness of her skin beneath his cheek.  The strength of her arms and legs and the litheness of her body.  The absent slide of her fingers through his sweat-slicked hair.  The desperate possessiveness he felt from her in that moment, with her holding him _tightly_ in a way she’d never held him before.  “Steve?”

He realized belatedly that he hadn’t answered her.  “What?”

“I really need you to promise me something.”

He hesitated, not so much because he wouldn’t give her anything or do anything for her.  He would without a second thought.  He was reluctant because she was worrying him.  This wasn’t like her.  “Anything.”

She drew a deeper breath.  He could hear the air come into her lungs and her body struggling to hold it inside, like she was afraid if she let it go (if she let _him_ go), she’d be lost.  “Promise me that no matter what happens we’ll be together.”

Now he did pull away and push himself up so he could see her face.  “I should never have said anything.  I’m sorry.  I didn’t mean to upset you.  I’ll stay with SHIELD.”

“This isn’t about SHIELD,” she returned.  “I don’t give a damn about SHIELD.”

“Natasha–”

There was such aching need in her eyes.  Not for sex.  Not just for his touch or his kiss or his comfort.  For him.  For everything he meant to her.  It was raw and open, pulsing with equal parts fire and fragility, and guilt suddenly came over him, cold and harsh.  He’d never been _needed_ like this before, and he didn’t want her to know that it frightened him, too.  She took his silence for reticence.  “I know you keep your promises,” she said, taking him and pulling him closer to stare in his eyes.  “I know you do.  So if you promise me, you have to keep it.”  Her voice dropped to a faint murmur.  “You have to.  Promise me.  _Please._   No matter what happens you’ll be with me.”

Steve cupped her face, sliding his thumb over her cheek.  “I promise.”  Then he covered her with feverish kisses and tried not to think again.

* * *

They ordered pizza.  Lounged in front of the TV in his den in their pajamas, her body folded into his on the couch, eating and drinking beer and watching the last few episodes of _Downton Abbey_ that they’d missed over recent weeks.  They cuddled and talked, though not about work.  Not about SHIELD.  And then they went to bed where they made love again, this time slowly and carefully.  Natasha seemed intent on kissing and exploring every part of him like she was trying to memorize him.  Steve let her lead, let her find what she wanted, let her take whatever she needed.  It was painful in its restraint, a languid, aching buildup that nearly drove him mad.  She feasted on him like she was famished and only now getting her fill, like they hadn’t done this before that day or days ago.  Whatever was bothering her ran deep, and it hurt her.  He could see that as she came apart under him in a raw display of pleasure and desperation that bordered on fear.  He didn’t know how else to help other than to touch her and hold her and push her when she demanded it.  They fell asleep, sated but sweat-soaked and exhausted.

Years in the army had effectively destroyed Steve’s ability to sleep more than what was necessary, and because of the serum, what was necessary was disturbingly minimal sometimes.  Therefore, he was up before dawn.  Natasha was spooned beside him, still soundly slumbering.  His room was dark, the very first touches of sunlight lifting the heavy veil of shadows.  He laid there a while, listening to Natasha breathe against him, before gently untangling her body from his and sliding out of bed.  He kissed her shoulder and pulled the comforter up over her.  Then he brushed his teeth, dressed in his running clothes, put on his sneakers, and headed out the door.

It was barely 5:30 in the morning, but his neighbor, Kate, was coming home.  As he locked his apartment behind him, she was going into her own.  “Morning,” she said quietly.  She was dressed in pink scrubs, her honeyed hair curling about her pretty face in tendrils.  She smiled at him.

“Oh, hi,” he said.  She was a sweet girl who worked in one of the area hospitals.  He’d helped her move in maybe a year ago, lugging the larger of her furniture for her.  She’d come from nursing school in New York and had apparently moved to DC to be closer to her family.  She was quiet and nice, the sort of person with whom it was easy to talk.  She knew who he was, but she never asked about what he did and for that he was thankful.  It was all classified, and he was a terrible liar.  “Overnight shift?”

She looked fatigued and a tad exasperated.  “Yeah.  A long one, too.  I love medicine, but I could do without the ridiculous hours and the complete lack of a social life.”  He nodded in understanding.  Her eyes filled with hazy concern, like she was just remembering something.  “How are you feeling, by the way?  I meant to ask you when I saw you outside the other day.”

He waved away her worry.  She didn’t know what had happened to him, of course, but she’d seen how badly hurt he’d been.  It had been rather difficult to hide it over the weeks it had taken him to get back on his feet.  The serum had been so taxed that the bruises and cuts had been slow to heal, and the limp had been unfortunately very noticeable.  She’d been really sweet about it, offering to get him groceries or do his laundry or basically fetch whatever he wanted.  He didn’t think she realized Natasha had been or was living with him.  “I’m fine.  Completely recovered.  Back to work.  Today, actually.”

She smiled, lifting her eyebrows.  “Is that good?”

He laughed.  “I sure hope so.”

They lingered in an awkward moment of silence for a second before she slung her messenger bag over her shoulder.  “Well, I need to get some sleep.  See you.”

“Bye.”

She stepped inside her apartment and closed the door behind her.  Steve pocketed his keys and his phone and headed down the steps.  It was quiet this early in the morning, and that was always pleasant.  Running and working out weren’t necessary to keep him in shape, but he greatly enjoyed it, the quiet and pleasant simplicity of physical exertion.  Once he was down on the street, he breathed deeply of the fresh air and stretched a second before heading off on his normal route through the city.

He didn’t even get down the street.  There was a black SUV at the corner.  Somehow he knew who it was even before the driver’s door opened.  Steve slowed to a stop.  “I wasn’t aware you made house calls.”

“I don’t,” Nick Fury responded.  He stood dressed in black as he always was, his leather long coat brushing the tops of his combat boots.  His undamaged eye was narrowed.  “Get in the car.”  His tone was stern and demanded compliance.

Steve hesitated for a second.  He hadn’t seen Fury since his forced medical leave, but he noticed right away that the SHIELD Director seemed tense.  Furthermore, the fact that Fury was here like this could only mean he had something important to say, and it was too sensitive to be said at the Triskelion.  That feeling of distrust pricked at him again, but he did as he was told, opening the passenger door and sliding into the front seat.

Fury did the same on the other side, closing the driver’s door behind him.  He looked sternly at Steve, like he was analyzing him or measuring him up.  Figuring him out.  Judging him.  Steve had been on the receiving end of looks like that plenty of times in the past.  He gritted his teeth together and lifted his chin.  The silence crawled by, rife with tension and tormented by the echoes of the argument they’d had the last time they’d been together.  “I need your help, Captain.”

That quiet, resigned declaration cut through Steve’s irritation and wariness.  It wasn’t often Fury ever admitted to something like that, at least not to him.  Steve wanted to ask him what this was about, but he kept silent, watching Fury struggle with whatever it was he wanted to say.  “I wouldn’t be coming to you like this if I had any other choice.  But time’s running out, and I had to make a move.”  He turned and appraised Steve evenly.  “And right now, you’re the only person I trust.”

“Trust to do what?” Steve asked.  “And you’ve got a strange way of showing that.”  He couldn’t help the bitterness heating his tone even though he knew it was childish and counter-productive.

Fury was not pleased.  “Do you want an apology?  You’re not getting one.  You need to think with your head and not with your heart,” he said coolly.

Steve struggled to keep hold of his temper.  “I don’t want an apology.  I want to know what’s happening.  And I want an honest answer.”

“It’s not about honesty and visibility.  This is SHIELD, and we take the world as it is, not as we’d like it to be.  I’ve told you that.  I’ve been telling you that for weeks.  I don’t like repeating myself.  It’s about time you get with the program and realize that things aren’t always what they seem, that what you value can make you weak as much as it can make you strong.”  His words came faster and faster, tinged by anger and frustration.  And worry.  “That your assets can be used against you.”

Steve had never seen him like this.  “Why force me out like this?”

“I kept you out to protect you.”

Icy dread plummeted to the bottom of Steve’s stomach.  For some reason, this hadn’t occurred to him.  He knew right then and there that it should have.  And he knew that everything about which he and Natasha had been troubled was true.  “Protect me from what?”  Fury didn’t answer right away, shaking his head slightly in disgust.  “Protect me from what?  What the hell’s going on, Nick?”

“I don’t know,” Fury hastily admitted.  He seemed less than pleased with that.  Maybe he was a master manipulator and lied like no one else could, but Steve somehow knew that rushed announcement was the truth.  It was the truth, and Fury was terrified about it.  “Something’s going down.  I’m damn sure of it.  There are things coming down the line.  I can’t tell you what.  It’s better that you not know.  But trust me when I tell you that what’s coming will change the nature of world security.”

“No, I don’t trust you,” Steve said.  “I don’t trust anything about SHIELD right now.  What’s coming down the line?”

Fury closed his eye for a moment, sinking slightly into the driver’s seat.  The leather creaked loudly beneath him.  “After New York, the Council wanted to take a massive leap in threat analysis.  They wanted the ability to anticipate our enemies, to get out ahead of them and stop them before they even fire their first missile or shoot a single civilian.  Strike first and strike hard.  The worst thing about it is I was the one who pushed them into doing this.”  He looked genuinely regretful about that.  Steve didn’t know what to say.  “You were right, Rogers.  Can’t believe I’m saying that, but it’s true.  You were right about things getting sacrificed along the way.  But I can sit here and lament that all I want, and it’s not going to make it right.”

“Make what right?”

Fury appraised him evenly.  “The STRIKE Team tried to kill you in Russia.”

Steve had suspected that, but hearing Fury actually _say_ it made it real in a way that was deep and disturbing.  “Can you prove it?”

“If I could, we wouldn’t be having this discussion in my car,” Fury snapped.  The SHIELD Director was blatantly angry, like the mere fact that something like this had occurred under his watch was appalling.  Steve supposed it was.  Fury seemed to get himself together, breathing tightly.  “The telecom tech you had with you in Crimea was insistent that Agent Rumlow ordered Brushov’s ship sunk while you and Romanoff were still aboard.  He was _insistent_ that Rumlow knew you were trying to escape when he gave the command.  Unfortunately it’s just his word against the entire team.”

“That’s what this is about?” Steve asked.  “You need support to go after Rumlow?”

Fury sighed disappointedly through his nose.  “I wish it was that simple.  The kid also told me that there was a significant chunk of time in Sevastopol that Rumlow and a few others of the team were off-site.  He wasn’t sure where they went.  I’ve been trying to piece it back together, but without more data it’s been a challenge.  I figured that maybe the whole thing had been a front, a reason for Rumlow being there that went beyond the mission objectives, so I’ve been hunting down possible connections.  I correlated the six days that the STRIKE Team was holed up in the safe house with air and sea traffic around the area.” 

At that Fury handed him a tablet.  Steve looked over the display with quick eyes, noting one side was a list of all the ships that had been docked in the harbor and all of the flights into and out of the airport over the span of the time they’d been there.  It was cross-referenced on the other side of the screen with locations and names.  He looked up at Fury.  He wasn’t current with SHIELD’s efforts to catalog and characterize the world’s worst criminals and terrorists, but he recognized a few of these names.  “Wait, are you saying that Rumlow was there working with one of these guys?  Why?”

“Again, Rogers, if I knew that, I wouldn’t be here asking for your help,” Fury said irately.  “Data mining’s a convenient cover.  Romanoff has been tracking down some of these leads, but none of them have panned out.”

That explained Natasha’s missions.  “Why didn’t you tell Natasha the truth about this?”

“It’s called compartmentalization.  I find it useful, particularly when I’m investigating my own people.”  Fury tempered his anger over the next second.  “I thought I might be chasing shadows at first.  Now I know I’m not.  The tech who came to me about what happened?  Died two days ago in a car crash.”  Steve winced.  “I’ve learned not to believe in coincidences.”

Honestly, Fury didn’t need to convince Steve that Rumlow and the STRIKE Team weren’t on the level.  Before Crimea, he’d thought decently of Rumlow.  The guy was a hell of an agent, a black ops specialist like no one else with whom Steve had worked before, but he was too intense and just a tad cruel.  To Steve he’d never been anything other than amiable, though maybe sensibly distant and even a little forced and begrudging, but Steve had seen lesser agents be on the receiving end of Rumlow’s harsh treatment.  Rumlow could be vindictive without a shred of remorse.  And if he was betraying SHIELD, there was a hell of a reason to be concerned.  “What do you want me to do?”

Fury took the pad back for a second and scrolled using the touch screen to one item in the list.  He opened it.  “This is the _Lemurian Star_.  It purports to be some sort of satellite launch ship for a telecom firm based out of Istanbul, but the intelligence community has it linked to a couple dozen raids of commercial liners and cargo vessels over the last few months.”

“So it’s a pirate ship,” Steve surmised.

Fury nodded.  “It’s crewed by top mercenaries about a dozen in all, recruited from all over Europe but particularly from the Balkans,.  They’re led by this guy: Georges Batroc.”  Steve stared at the man’s picture.  He looked hard and humorless, more muscle than anything else, with a round head and narrow, fierce features.  “He’s an Algerian national that served in the DGSE.  The French demobilized him a couple of years ago, and since then he’s made an admirable effort of racking up a significant body count.  Interpol’s got him on their Red Notice, and the CIA’s been trying to shut him down for months.”

“What makes you think he and Rumlow met?”

“Because they’ve met before.  Before Rumlow came to us, he was a SEAL.  There was an op in Basra in 2006 in which both SOCOM and the DGSE were involved, and many of the specialists sent in were killed or captured.  I know Rumlow was taken prisoner.  The French went through quite a bit of effort to keep it quiet, but Batroc was, as well.  They were both held by the militants for weeks before they were rescued.  Like I said, I don’t believe in coincidences.”

Steve didn’t, either.  “Where is this ship now?”

“It doesn’t often make port, at least not where we can easily track it.  But I have it on good authority from an arms dealer that the _Lemurian Star_ is going to be in Algiers tomorrow.  Considering how hard it is to track Batroc and his men down, we need to move now while we have the opportunity.  I need you to go out there and shut them down.”

“Shut them down?”  He didn’t like ambiguity.  And he wasn’t a weapon.

“I trust you to use your own judgment.”  Steve didn’t care how evil someone was or what someone did.  He wouldn’t kill a man in anything less than defense of himself or someone else; that was murder, and it was wrong.  War was one thing, and the compromises they’d made when fighting the Nazis still bothered him sometimes.  But stealth ops and assassination?  That he wouldn’t do.  Still there were plenty of other things he would, like see Batroc and his men were incapacitated and arrested.  “If there’s any sign of Rumlow’s involvement with Batroc, I want to know about it.  This–”  At that, Fury handed him a silver stick with the SHIELD logo on it.  “–is a USB drive equipped with its own software to ghost any computer system it’s connected to.  Plug it in and it will copy everything automatically.”

Steve took the device.  He released a slow breath.  “Bring whatever you find back.  You report to me, Rogers.  No one else.  I want this done silently.  I…”  Fury hesitated again.  “I get the feeling Secretary Pierce doesn’t want this matter investigated.  I’m not sure why.  The Council is less than pleased with the delays we’ve had, and I think Pierce is trying to salvage the situation and cover my ass.  But…”

“What?” Steve prompted.

“I can’t be sure.  I haven’t been entirely candid with him about what I’ve found, and I want to keep it that way.”  Fury watched him as he palmed the USB drive and looked over the data on Batroc and the _Lemurian Star_.  “I can’t order you to do this, Cap.  I can’t order you to do anything.  But believe me when I tell you that I need you.  I kept you on the bench because I wanted to keep you safe.  Rumlow wasn’t at all subtle about trying to get you killed.  And if something’s moving in the shadows…”

Steve didn’t appreciate the doubt.  Maybe that was all there could be.  “Alright.  We’ll leave immediately.  Romanoff and I can–”

“Not Romanoff.  Just you, Cap.”

Steve didn’t understand for a second, his mind reeling.  “What?”

“She stays.  You go alone.”

Steve’s expression must have revealed how alarmed and reluctant he was.  He’d never done a mission for SHIELD alone.  It wasn’t that he didn’t think he was capable, but this was not his strength.  He was a leader, first and foremost, a tactician and mission commander.  But more than that, he couldn’t remember the last time he’d been out in the field without Natasha at his side.  She was his partner.  And if Fury was barring Natasha from coming with him, then he either had doubts as to her state of mind and capability or doubts as to her loyalties.  He wasn’t sure which was more disturbing.  The words were out of his mouth before he even thought to speak.  “What are you saying?  She’s not–”

“It has nothing to do with her,” Fury hotly retorted.  “Pierce is questioning her.  He’s watching her.  If I want to keep this quiet, I can’t have her involved.  Sending her out is a red flag, and I can’t afford that right now.  Not until I know what we’re dealing with.  Do you understand that?”

Steve couldn’t just accept that.  His chest felt tight with anger, frustration, and confusion.  “Is SHIELD compromised?” he demanded.  Fury didn’t answer.  He didn’t want to, if the clenching of his jaw and the narrowing of his eye was any indication.  He stared darkly at the street before him.  “Nick, is SHIELD compromised?”

“I don’t know,” Fury quietly admitted.  “There’s that old saying.  ‘Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.’  It’s trite bullshit, but a lot of times trite bullshit is true.”  Steve expected more, some explanation, but there was none.  After a long pause, he looked at Steve squarely, and the matter was closed for discussion.  “I’ve arranged for transportation.  Retrieve the intel.  If you can reduce Batroc’s ability to terrorize the innocent people of the world, more power to you.  Mission objectives and information are all on that pad.”  There was surprising openness in his gaze and softness in his voice as he met Steve’s gaze again.  “I didn’t just bench you to keep you safe.  I kept you out so I could bring you in when I needed you.  And I need you now.  I need you on this, Cap.  Keep it quiet.  Just get in there and get it done.  All goes well you should be back the day after tomorrow.”

Steve looked down at the tablet and drive.  Despite the fear and disquiet he’d suffered moments before and the anger that Fury was sending him off without Natasha, he was mostly numb with acceptance.  He had to do this.  He didn’t know what projects the Council had in motion, but if Fury was worried about the danger they could pose the world should evil get its greedy hands on them, he had to do what he could to stop that.  And that meant trusting that Fury knew best.  It wasn’t easy after everything Fury had done in the past.  Lying about the HYDRA weapons on the helicarrier and Phase Two.  Lying about Crimea and the insanity serum.  Their argument.  But he had to do it, had to operate on faith, because not doing anything at all was too risky.

And if he had to keep Natasha out of the loop or even lie to keep her safe, he would do that too, no matter how much it hurt him.

“You got this, soldier?” Fury asked.

“Yes, sir,” Steve answered with a curt nod.  “I’ve got it.”

“Good.  See you in two days.”  Steve glanced at Fury, trying to read deeper into it, but it was said sternly and matter-of-factly, like he hadn’t just ordered Captain America on a secret mission and undoubtedly extremely dangerous mission.  But for Fury it was always about the ends and seeing them accomplished swiftly and efficiently.  So Steve grabbed the tablet and the USB drive, pushed open the passenger door, and stepped back out onto the sidewalk.  After he closed the door, Fury rolled down the window and nodded once.  “Be careful, Captain.”  He drove away.

* * *

Steve was in a bit of a daze, his mind racing but coming up short, as he went back to his apartment.  He stripped off his running clothes and took a quick shower.  He brushed his hair, brushed his teeth, and shaved.  With military efficiency driving him, he was dressed and entirely ready to go in a matter of minutes.  His sneakers thudded softly on the floor as he went over to grab his shield where it was in the corner of his bedroom.  And when his eyes fell upon Natasha’s sleeping form in his bed, still nestled in the comforter and sheets where he’d left her, something inside him throbbed miserably.  He could write her a note or leave her a text to tell her that he was leaving.  Some small part of him wanted to do that because it was the easy way out.  But he felt guilty even considering it, so he banished the ugly idea and knelt at the bedside.  “Nat,” he called softly, reaching his fingers to her face to carefully brush the hair from her eyes.  “Nat, wake up a sec.”

She did.  Her eyelids fluttered and she groaned a little, rolling onto her back and squinting up at the ceiling.  They flitted over to Steve for a moment before closing again.  “What time is it?”

“Early.  You can sleep.  I just need to tell you something.”

“What?” she quietly asked.

He smiled weakly.  “Fury’s sending me out.”

She jolted to awareness.  “What?  He’s…”  She sat up, reaching for him.  He took her hand, folding their fingers together.  She stared into his eyes like she thought he might be lying and was searching for the truth.  He didn’t know what to expect.  They were both SHIELD agents, and they lived dangerous lives.  And she couldn’t very well be upset about this when she’d done the same to him numerous times over the last two weeks.  But he still feared that she would be, because if she was, he knew he was going to have an even harder time leaving her.  He already feared he wouldn’t be able to after how vulnerable she’d been last night.

But Natasha was so much stronger than he realized sometimes.  She gathered her wits and her expression into a calm hint of a frown.  “How long?”

“Couple of days.”

“By yourself?”

He nodded.  “I’ll be alright.”  He didn’t bother with nonsense about it not being dangerous because she knew it was for Fury to send in Captain America.  And she didn’t bother asking about where he was going or what he was doing because she knew that he would have told her if he could.  So she only nodded too.  Steve cupped her face, summoning the best smile he could manage.  His thumb swept over her lips, lips still swollen from so many frantic kisses the night before.  He pressed his mouth gently to hers, trying not to savor it so much because – _damn it_ – there was no reason to.  He pulled away and kissed her forehead before standing and sliding his shield over his back.  He took a few steps away, their hands linked until his fingers slid away from hers.  “Be here when I get back?”

She nodded as she let go of him.  But he only made it a few steps away before she was out of their bed, the comforter around her naked body.  “Steve, wait!”  He turned just as she flung herself at him, just as she wrapped herself around him and kissed him breathless.  Her fingers found their way into his hair, tightening and mussing it.  Steve slid an arm around her, keeping her flush to him.  The kiss grew more desperate, wild and frenzied with need and fear, and when she finally pulled away from him, she said, “I’ll be here.”  She searched his eyes again, hers filled with strength and certainty that he needed to see right then.  “Just make sure you come back.”

Steve drew a deep breath and nodded.  “I love you.”

“Love you, too.”

She drew the blanket tighter around herself, watching his every movement as he turned and left her.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Super extra special thanks to Belmene for help with the French translations!

The _Lemurian Star_ was docked in a shadowy, uninviting port on the Mediterranean.  In front of it, Algiers was bright and bustling even at this late hour, glowing as it sprawled its way up the hills on the northern coast of Africa.  Behind it, the sea was dark and glassy, shifting with gentle, frothy swells that shone like streaks of pearl and diamond.  The harbor was quiet and peaceful.  The night was heavy with heat and humidity, so much so that Steve’s uniform was plastered to his body with perspiration as he waited.  Remaining motionless and quiet this long had been miserable to say the least.  Steve counted himself a patient person, but the moist air was so sweltering and stifling around him that it was really testing his restraint.  He’d been hiding inside one of the small buildings along the pier for the last couple of hours, keeping to the thick shadows among some old, musty crates inside and watching out the rusty, crude-covered window for the ship to arrive.  Fury’s informant had said the _Lemurian Star_ would be there shortly after midnight, and he’d been true to his word.  The ship had docked about fifteen minutes ago.  Steve had a fairly decent view of it on the second floor of this dilapidated shack, and he’d been tracking the pirates’ movements on the deck, trying to gauge how many there were, where they were, what sort of munitions they had, and what they were doing.  He shook his head slightly.  After what happened in Crimea, he would have been perfectly content to never board another hostile ship as long as he lived.  The last time he’d done this, he’d been shot.  Twice.  And nearly beaten to death by his crazed, maniacal Russian counterpart.  And nearly drowned.  Come to think of it, this was the _third_ time he would have to deal with a bunch of bad guys on a boat like this for SHIELD.  The first time he’d almost drowned, too.  And he’d been keelhauled.  _The fun never stops._

He could handle this mission but damn if he didn’t just want it to be over.  His back was still tender and bothered him at times, not enough to impede him by any means, but just shy of sufficiently stiff and painful to be aggravating.  He knew he was ready, but for the first time in a really long time, his heart wasn’t as sure as the rest of him.  He’d never been knocked down so hard before, injured so badly, so it was only natural to doubt himself a little and to actually be afraid of being hurt again.  To make matters worse, Fury’s intel was a little off.  He’d counted twenty-five pirates thus far, including Batroc who’d come up to the deck to bark orders to his men a few minutes ago before disappearing down below again.  The _Lemurian Star_ was a huge vessel, equipped with what looked to be state of the air technology, weapons, and a helipad at its stern.  Twenty-five men couldn’t possibly effectively guard such a lengthy ship.  It was just too much ground to cover.  So he watched and waited a few minutes more, his eidetic memory helping him plot the course each of the pirates was walking around the decks of the ship.  When he saw his opening, he slipped silently back out of the shack.  There was a ramshackle gangway around the top it, nothing more than rusty plates of metal under his feet and corroded rails around him.  He ducked low on the end of it closest to the ship, watching carefully as the pirate at the rail of the deck paused a moment to look around on the dock below.  When he went on his way, Steve jumped.  He easily made it the dozen feet up to the railing of the ship, soundlessly grasping the sturdy steel and bracing his boots against the side.  With a graceful leap, he landed on the deck silently.

Steve moved fast.  Despite the heavy cloud cover, the deck was well-lit, washed in overly pale illumination from the light fixtures spread around it.  He had boarded toward the forward section of the vessel, with the long expanse of the _Lemurian Star_ behind him.  The bridge was located right above him atop the massive structure that comprised the head of the ship.  He ducked behind some equipment, concealing himself in its shadows.  And he waited again, listening.  Despite his advanced hearing, he hadn’t been able to make out what the pirates had been saying from inside the shack.  He didn’t know exactly what he was looking for or how to find it, so staying hidden seemed as good a plan as any for the moment.

He didn’t have to wait for long.  There was a crackle of static over a walkie-talkie.  _“Notre contact arrive dans cinq minutes.”_

The man who’d recently passed him was down the deck a few feet.  Steve pressed his back to equipment behind him to remain concealed while he leaned over to see him.  _“Compris,”_ the pirate said, lifting his walkie-talkie to his lips and shouldering his rifle.

The muffled voice resounded over the line again.  _“Escortez-le vers le pont.  Puis appelez Durand.  Je veux que tout soit bouclé dans trente minutes.”_   The tone was tense and displeased.

The man nodded.   _“Oui, Batroc.”_

Steve leaned away as the guard walked back the way he came, heading towards the ship’s interior.  Below there was a gangway on the starboard side that led down to the pier.  He breathed softly, taking a moment to think.  He didn’t know who this contact was; Fury hadn’t said anything about it, but whoever it was, it could certainly prove important.  Considering they had no idea what Batroc was up to or what his relationship or business with Rumlow was, any information was pertinent.  And it sounded like he needed to move fairly quickly.  Batroc wanted them underway in thirty minutes.  That meant at the very least he needed to find the server room and copy the data.  Fury had provided him with a few satellite images and blueprints of ships similar in size and make to this one, but despite his best efforts, he hadn’t been able to locate an exact deck plan or map.  The _Lemurian Star_ was massive, significantly larger than either of the two ships that Brushov had had under his command in Crimea.  It wasn’t going to be easy to find what he needed unless he had time to look around.  The satellite launch platform was in the rear of the ship, where cranes, loading equipment, and specialized gear rose high above the deck and curled over it.  From here he could see the twin towers that surrounded the platform, one likely housing the launch control center.  SHIELD’s own satellite launch ships typically had their databanks in the stern.  Back there, maybe?

It didn’t matter.  To do this, he would have to move fast and take out some of the pirates.  And to do that, he needed ears and eyes on everything.

Ears first.

He crept silently down the deck, heading aft and to the port side in search of another of the pirates.  He found one easily enough, leaning against the rail and smoking with his rifle uncaringly lowered.  Steve leapt from the shadows and grabbed the man about the neck, squeezing tightly enough to strangle him unconsciousness.  He gurgled, unable to scream, and slumped to the deck in short order.  Steve took him by the leg and dragged him into the concealing blackness behind him.  Then he knelt and took his walkie-talkie.  He stuffed it into his belt and sprinted down the deck quietly, wondering how many of the pirates he could disable before anyone noticed something was amiss.  He came upon another, snatching his gun from the man’s hands and landing an impressive kick in his chest.  He was flung back into the metal bulkhead of the ship with a crunch.  A second man noticed the clamor and ripped around to fire at him, his mouth opening to raise the alarm, but Steve was much faster.  He already had his shield off his back, and he slammed it into the pirate’s face, knocking him out cold.  It took only a moment to pull the incapacitated men into the interior of the ship behind him, leaving them on the floor of a storage room and breaking the lock on the door so they couldn’t escape.

 _“Le contact est ici,”_ someone said on the walkie-talkie.  Steve hardly paused, continuing to sweep forward on the port side and dispensing with the pirates.  At the next one he tossed his shield, and it struck with enough force to send the man barreling back into some pipes behind him.  Steve whirled and grabbed his companion, bringing his knee up sharply into the man’s midriff to force the air from his lungs and then again into his head to knock him out.  He snatched his shield as it came back to him, sprinting down the deck, keeping to the shadows as much as possible.  Another couple of guards were on a lower deck amidships.  He grasped the railing as he jumped down, and when his boots softly thudded as he landed the men turned.  Steve took one by the vest and threw him into the other.  They went down in a tangled mess of limbs, cursing and groaning.  He made sure they stayed down, and after that he tore across the deck, moving like a shadow himself, dark against the night and impossibly fast.  He leapt smoothly back up to the higher deck and crouched alongside a small structure that contained a stairwell into the ship’s belly.  He looked back at from where he’d come.

The ship’s lights were bright enough that he could clearly see through the massive windows of the bridge.  He recognized Batroc rising from the captain’s chair.  There were four other pirates in there with him.  The door opened in the rear of the room, but one of the men shifted and Steve couldn’t see who came inside.  _Damn it._   He had to make a decision at this point.  He could either stay and attempt to discern who their contact was or he could continue to the launch control center in the rear and hopefully find the ship’s computer banks.  He decided on the latter option, since that was his mission objective.  The arrival of this contact, whoever it was, would provide enough of a distraction for him to get that done.

Steve watched a moment more, narrowing his eyes and hoping for a better glimpse of the contact, but it was pointless.  Silently he stood and ran down the rest of the way aft on the _Lemurian Star._   He encountered some resistance, plowing through one man and sending him sprawling and shoving another roughly into a bulkhead.  The third tried to actually engage him.  Steve batted his gun away before he had the chance to shoot it, but he drew a knife which he wielded clumsily.  He stabbed at Steve, the silver blade slicing through the air to hit the vibranium of his shield with a dull clang.  Reeling in surprise, the man staggered, and Steve snatched his wrist and broke it with one twist, disarming him.  He chucked him into the railing.  The one he’d thrown into the bulkhead weakly reached for the handle to the fire alarm, but Steve scooped up the fallen knife and threw it at him.  It drove deep into his hand, the front of the blade bending and breaking from the force as it hit the metal of the bulkhead, and the pirate howled.  Steve was on him in an instant, and a knee to his chin dropped him.

Ahead was the launch platform.  Steve raced across it to the twin towers that were adjacent to it, wondering which to try.  Thankfully, he didn’t have to randomly pick.  Batroc’s rough orders resounded through his walkie-talkie.  _“Préparez le paquet. Nous sommes sur le chemin du retour.”_ The door to the left tower opened.  Steve darted to the shadows beneath the stairwell that led down from it in two huge steps, his hand dropping to the walkie-talkie in his belt and turning it off.  He watched boots appear above his head, slamming loudly onto the metal grate.  The man was grumbling irately in French, cussing vulgarly.  He didn’t respond to Batroc right away, walking heavily down the steps.  _“Vous me recevez?”_ came a warning growl.

The man raised his walkie-talkie to his mouth.  _“A-t-il apporté de l'argent?”_

_“Tenez-vous prêt maintenant.”_

_“Tout de suite, Batroc.”_   The man’s voice was tight with frustration.  He stomped across the deck.  _“Ras le bol de cette connerie,”_ he hissed in fury.  He reached the opposite door, yanked the handle down, and shoved it open.  _“Dépêchez-vous, putain! Ils arrivent!”_

Steve made his move.  He charged across the deck, tackling the man from the rear and shoving him into whatever room lay beyond.  The guy cried out, the walkie-talkie skittering across the floor.  Steve punched him in the face, and he went limp beneath him.  The pirates inside the room (this was the control center, if the rows of state of art computers and huge monitoring screens were any indication) shouted and clambered for their guns.  They might have been highly trained and highly skilled mercenaries, but they were no match for Captain America.  Steve’s shield rang through the air, a blur of red, blue, and silver, as it knocked the gun from the hands of one of the men and struck another in the side in a perfect arc before flying back to Steve’s waiting hand.  He rolled on the ball of his foot, whirling and landing a hard kick at the closest thug.  The man collapsed in a boneless heap.  There were still two more, one seated at the console and another in the rear of the room.  Steve kicked the handgun from the pirate at the keyboard, slamming his head into the desk.  The last man smartly dropped his weapon and raised his hands, backing away.

“What’s the package?” Steve asked.  The man stared at him.  He was young, younger than Steve at any rate, with wide-eyes and an unshaven face.  He probably didn’t speak English.  _“Qu’est-ce que c’est, ce paquet?”_

The pirate hesitated.  A more hardened criminal might not have betrayed his leader or his cause so easily, but the young man darted his eyes to the computer terminal near where his companion had been working.  There was a silver USB drive connected to one of the external ports.  Steve glanced at the computer screen in front of the man who was now slumped over his keyboard.  He wasn’t as technologically savvy as others at SHIELD, but he knew more than most people realized.  And the red words splayed all over the screen indicated a massive file transfer had been completed to the drive.

Steve’s brow furrowed in confusion.  He stepped around the man crumpled in the chair and reached for the device.  His eyes caught something else on the computer screens.  He pulled one of the keyboards closer and dismissed the window about the file transfer.  Behind it was a slew of windows, filled with lists of files.  With locations.  Longitudes and latitudes.  He glanced down at that, wondering what the hell he was looking at.  There was no indication from the title of the window, but one location was repeated many times.  39-23’17” North, 075-19’51” West.  His mind raced.  He’d looked at enough maps to know that was somewhere on the East Coast of the United States.  _What the hell is this?_

The door slammed open.  Batroc and his men barged inside.  When they saw Steve, they stopped, eyes narrowing and jaws tightening.  Steve grabbed the USB stick and pulled it from the computer.  The terminal immediately shifted to some sort of self-deletion mode.  Backing up from Batroc, he glanced at the computer as it methodically removed all of its files.  All of the terminals and monitors in the room went dark at once.  Red letters flashed on them in French, boldly proclaiming “SYSTEM SHUTDOWN COMPLETE”.  Whatever this thing was, it looked like Steve had the only copy of it clenched in his palm.

SHIELD’s intelligence on Batroc indicated he was a man of few words, a man who preferred to get his messages across with actions, quickly, decisively, and violently.  He stared at Steve, rage simmering behind dark blue eyes, a displeased frown twisting him lips.  He said nothing, sneering slightly, as his men lifted their AK-47s and fired.

Steve ducked, holding tight to the USB stick and bringing his shield before him.  Bullets clanked uselessly against it, ringing loudly in the room and ricocheting wildly.  Computer screens were hit, and they spat sparks and winked out.  Steve gritted his teeth, placing the USB stick into his pocket.  He twisted to reflect the fire back at the men shooting at him.  One of them was hit, and that created enough of a lull for him to vault over one of the rows of consoles and jump toward the pirates.  He sacrificed protection for a second, launching his shield at the other man firing at him.  The powerful edge of it struck the man in the throat, and he went down against the filing cabinets behind them with a gurgle.  Batroc was quick to charge when Steve was unarmed, though, coming at him with all the power and restraint of a freight train barreling down its tracks.  Steve blocked the first strike, but another came right after it.  It glanced against his forearm with surprising ferocity.  They traded a series of quick blows, elegantly and expertly exchanged.  Batroc spun, trying to land a kick against Steve’s chest, but Steve ducked pushed the other man back into the filing cabinets.  The impact was enough to dent the green metal and daze Batroc, but only for a second.  He recovered and went after Steve hard and fast, forcing him back out of the room.  Steve countered and blocked the storm of punches and kicks, flipping back on his hands and grabbing his fallen shield as he did.  Batroc attacked at his second of relative weakness, raining blows down in a frenzy and driving Steve further back across the deck toward the other tower.

Frustrated, Steve gritted his teeth and regained his footing, digging his boots into the deck to find some purchase as he fought back.  He caught Batroc’s next punch against his shield and pivoted, knocking the other man’s hand away and driving his own fist into the pirate’s stomach.  Though the strike would have dropped most men, Batroc showed no sign of pain, grabbing Steve’s wrist against his own body and keeping it there to slam his shoulder into Steve’s chest.  Irritation and anger rushed over Steve; he normally tried to pull his punches against ordinary men if he could because he’d always rather disable someone than kill him.  He’d learned early on as a super soldier that his strength was a weapon that required careful control, and a single lapse in that control could result in unintentionally crushed bones and mangled bodies.  But Batroc was significantly stronger, faster, more muscled, and more skilled than the sort of henchmen, soldiers, and thugs against whom he normally fought.  And Batroc obviously had no qualms about killing him.  Murdering Captain America in arm to arm combat would probably be a hell of a trophy.

Steve yanked himself free of Batroc’s hold, his back twinging a little for the effort, but that didn’t slow him as he kicked his right foot into the pirate’s thigh.  That won him a grimace and a grunt, and in the split second Batroc faltered, Steve slammed his shield into the other man’s chest.  He was sent flying a good fifteen feet across the deck, landing roughly on his back and sliding a few feet more.  Steve stood, breathing a little heavily but more from annoyance than actual exertion.  Batroc was dazed for only a breath before springing back to his feet.  He came at Steve even harder, maybe a little desperately like he was realizing he’d bit off perhaps more than he could chew, punching with all of his strength.  Steve blocked every rapid strike, catching it against his shield or with his forearm.  When Batroc backed off slightly, Steve wrapped his fist into the man’s vest and yanked him down, ramming his knee up into Batroc’s chest.  Batroc used the momentum of the blow to disengage, and he was back across the deck again in a dizzying show of flips and acrobatics.

He landed firmly, eyeing Steve warily.  He shook his head, as though in disgust.  “They say the Red Guardian shattered you, crushed you down to nothing,” he taunted in sloppy English.  “Hide behind your pathetic shield.  Weak.  Scared.”  A smile curled the corner of his mouth.  “Is that all you can do?”

Steve narrowed his eyes.  He stood to his full height, glaring at his opponent.  Then he slid his shield to his back.  _“On va voir.”_   The two slipped back into fighting stances, waiting and watching each other.  Batroc grinned confidently, a feral, anticipatory glint in his eye, as he charged Steve again.  He threw himself entirely into the melee, eager again to measure his own strength, agility, and prowess against Captain America.  His strikes were savage, thrown with all his power behind them and aimed at Steve’s chest and head, but Steve skillfully deflected them all.  Not one of them landed.  Batroc was fairly shocked by that, so much so that he got sloppy.  It was barely an opening at all, not more than a beat, but Steve had been anticipating it.  He landed his elbow in the man’s face, knocking him back, and followed that with a hard kick to Batroc’s shin.  Batroc staggered.  When he charged again, Steve hit him even harder.  And when he tried to come at him a third time, Steve agilely jumped, flipping himself around completely and slamming his boots into Batroc’s face in the process.  He thudded back to the deck, watching in satisfaction as the pirate fell on his back.

Steve stood over him, looking down in disgust and ire as Batroc fought to get himself up.  He was dizzy and unsteady, clumsily planting his feet beneath him.  Now Steve was the one who gave a small, confident grin, running forward and tackling Batroc around his middle.  The man yelped as they slammed back into the launch control room.  Steve shoved the pirate to the floor under his weight, banging his head down, before throwing his fist unforgivingly into Batroc’s face.  Batroc went limp underneath him.

Panting slightly, Steve stood.  It felt good to win this fight.  Granted this man was no Red Skull or Red Guardian or Chitauri warrior, but he’d been formidable, and Steve had defeated him easily.  The adrenaline slowly faded, and he glanced around for a lost and flustered moment.  The control room was dark now, the empty computers flashing their warnings at him.  That reminded him of what was in his pocket.  He pulled the USB drive out.  Then he released a short breath of surprise.  He hadn’t noticed before, but the drive had the SHIELD logo on it.  For a brief moment he entertained the possibility that he’d grabbed the wrong one, that this was the one that Fury had given him, but that was in one of the pouches of his belt.  He slipped his fingers inside and pulled it out.  The two drives were nearly identical.  The one that Fury had given him was slightly shorter and slightly wider.  These were minute, cosmetic differences that were usually borne of one being an earlier or later model than the other.  Steve didn’t know what to make of this.

Unfortunately, there was no time to figure it out now.  _“Batroc? Ici Berchard. Statut. Le contact est menace de partir.”_   Steve glanced down at the walkie-talkie on the console.  _“Merde Batroc. Quels sont vos ordres? On peut l’empechêr de partir.”_  

Steve grabbed the walkie-talkie.  _“Arrêtez-le. Nous arrivons.”_   He put the empty drive Fury gave him back in his belt and slid the other into his pocket.  Then he ran.  He needed to get back to the bridge and find out who this contact was before he lost him.

It was already too late.  _“Batroc! Il s’en va! Batroc!”_

 _Damn it._   Steve sprinted, bounding over the deck of the ship.  He charged up staircases, taking the steps three or four at a time.  After crossing the amidships well where the cargo hold was, he leapt from the lower deck to the higher one, grabbing the railing and hauling himself over it before running as fast as possible toward the forward sections of the ship.  He glanced up at the bridge where it was bathed in the ship’s harsh lights.  He saw the contact, a blur of gray and black and pale flesh, dispensing with the pirates.  After that, he was gone, probably heading down the stairwell to the deck below in an attempt to escape this deal gone wrong.  Steve ground his teeth together, swinging starboard and pressing all the speed he could from himself.  He was stronger than anyone, faster than anyone, so this person sure as hell wasn’t getting away without answering some questions first.

Steve raced along the railing of the starboard side.  Ahead he could see the gangway leading down to the pier.  Sure enough, a dark figure was running down it.  There was a crackle of gunfire, and the figure whirled, pulling a pistol from his suit that he unloaded at the pirates shooting at him.  He tossed the spent weapon into the water between the ship and the pier.  Steve watched him make his way toward a black SUV on the dock, parked not far from the building in which he’d been hiding before.  Steve wasted not a second, taking a running leap.  He cleared the rise of the railing easily and jumped down the dozens of feet to the pier.  He landed gracefully, tucking himself into a roll and ducking behind a pile of crates between him and the SUV.  He heard the car door open and close.  The engine roared.  _Stop him!_   Steve wrenched his shield from behind his back, planning on throwing it into some vital area of the car to disable it, but before he could the SUV burst through the crates and hit him in the chest.  His shield absorbed most of the impact, but he hadn’t been prepared for that and pain rattled up his arms and down his torso and thighs.  Steve yelped, digging his boots into the pier to push back, but he didn’t have a lot of leverage.  With a growl of frustration and all of his strength he lifted his arms slightly and managed to get the edge of his shield down through the soft metal of the car’s hood.  That was all he needed to propel himself up.

He flipped onto the roof of the SUV.  Whoever was driving it veered wildly as it raced down the pier.  Steve struggled to hang on for a second as the car beneath him violently lurched and flew over bumps and whatever happened to be in its course.  The driver was furiously attempting to dislodge him with the rough ride, the car nearly tipping as a turn to the right was taken way too fast.  The sleek surface didn’t provide much in terms of grips, but this SUV had a roof rack that he was able to get his fingers around to prevent himself from tumbling off.  He pulled himself to the driver’s side, balled his left fist, and smashed it through the window.  “Get your foot off the gas!” he shouted.  They were outside of the pier now and speeding through the shipping yards.  Thank God it was late; there weren’t people around to be endangered by them haphazardly tearing through the place.  Steve reached his hand into the car and grabbed the steering wheel.  One twist of his wrist could send the car off course.  He’d survive a crash, but the driver might not.  “Get off the gas!”

That apparently wasn’t enough of a threat.  Or the driver didn’t speak English.  Steve gritted his teeth in irritation and worry, ducking as a low hanging arm of a construction crane nearly clipped him.  They’d careened through most of the shipping yards and were now cutting across freight rail track.  Ahead a train engine was dark and idle.  They’d hit it in a matter of seconds.  Steve blindly reached back toward the seat, curled his strong fingers around a fleshy neck, and yelled again, “ _Arrêtez!_   Stop!”

The SUV suddenly shrieked as the driver slammed on the brakes.  The car hit the steel rail of the tracks too fast and partly turned, ripping around and off the ground.  Steve let go before he was crushed, colliding with the ground hard on his shoulder but lithely somersaulting away and up onto his knees.  The SUV landed upside down with a loud screech and smashing noise, spinning and rolling before settling against the engine into which it would have crashed. 

The stench of burning rubber and exhaust was strong in the heavy, moist air.  A couple of the SUV’s tires were still spinning.  The passenger side was crumpled against the train engine.  Breathing heavily, Steve paused a second.  He slid his shield to his back again and walked to the wrecked car, the gravel of the train yard crunching under his boots.  The man within was already trying to get himself out, scrambling to crawl through the broken window.  Steve could see now he was bald and wore an expensive suit and glasses.  _Can’t be._   He reached down and grabbed the man by the neck as he struggled to free his legs.  He hauled him up.

Sitwell stared at him.  He stared at Sitwell.  “What the hell?” Steve asked.  He dropped the other man, alarm coursing over him and leaving him more than confused.  He was completely shocked.  “What are you doing here, Sitwell?”

“Could ask the same of you, Rogers!”  Sitwell coughed a little.  His nose was broken if the blood and swelling was any indication.  He struggled for a moment, hacking more into the now filthy sleeve of his once pristine suit.  He wiped at the sore and weeping wound on his face.  “Fury sent me.  Christ.”

Steve grimaced and took a step back.  That couldn’t be right.  “Fury sent you?”

“Yes,” Sitwell said.  “Of course he sent me!  You think this is what I do on my own time?”  He doubled over, hands planted on his knees and fighting to catch his wind, spitting a bloody mouthful to the ground.  Steve’s mind raced, trying to make heads or tails of this.  Why would Fury have sent him in if he already had Sitwell embedded in Batroc’s operation as an informant or a mole?  And Sitwell wasn’t a field agent.  It didn’t make any sense.  Sitwell seemed equally puzzled and flustered.  “What the hell?  If this is someone’s idea of a joke, it isn’t fucking funny.  We could have killed each other!”

Steve stepped back again.  He was reeling.  This…  Something wasn’t right about this.  He didn’t know what to say, a storm of thoughts and emotions bursting through his brain.  He couldn’t placate his suspicion.  “Fury didn’t tell me anything about you being here,” he said.

“There are a lot of things Fury doesn’t tell you.”  It was impossible to read Sitwell’s tone.  He was tense and frustrated, but was that a statement meant to bait him or upset him?  To make him doubt what Fury had told him?  It was more than obvious the agent was angry, which made sense.  Steve had likely just wrecked this whole operation, not to mention threatening his life.  But Sitwell, having finally caught his breath, only straightened and regarded him with blazing eyes.  “Did you get it at least?”

He knew about what Sitwell was asking.  The agent had clearly been sent to buy it, after all.  Steve tensed, every muscle in his body going taut like a pulled bow string.  That suspicion was becoming louder and louder, a whisper then a whine and now a wail.  “What is it?”

Sitwell didn’t appreciate his question.  “Did you get it?”

Steve didn’t appreciate his lack of an answer, either.  “What is it?”

“If Fury didn’t feel the need to tell you, then you don’t need to know.”

Steve bristled, but he’d learned a thing or two from Natasha about keeping his features in check.  His expression was a wrathful one, betraying nothing of how very confused and shaken he was.  He didn’t know who was lying, Sitwell or Fury.  Or maybe they both were lying and he was being played.  It wouldn’t be the first time SHIELD had sent him into a situation without being honest about why.  It used to not bother him so much, but that was before Fury’s duplicity about Brushov’s insanity serum had nearly cost him his life and the woman he loved.  “Unless you tell me the truth, it’s staying out of your hands,” he said.  “Now what the hell is going on?  Why are you here and what is on the drive?”

Sitwell stared at him evenly for a moment, probably judging him and gauging the best way to extricate himself from this mess while still getting what he needed.  Maybe he was as surprised and as lost as Steve was, trying to figure out if Steve was being truthful with him.  With all the whispers and unrest crawling in the shadows around SHIELD of late, it was probably only natural.  Then the man closed his eyes a little and slumped as though in defeat.  Steve belatedly realized it wasn’t defeat.  It was pain.  There was blood on Sitwell’s white dress shirt over his lower left torso.  He really was banged up.  Steve’s anger cooled instantly, and he took a step closer to steady the smaller man.  “How badly are you hurt?”

It was a crack of concern in his hard visage, and that was all it took.  Sitwell moved fast, pulling a handgun from under his suit jacket and jabbing it into Steve’s chest.  Steve immediately backed off.  The gun didn’t waver, and Sitwell’s face was the picture of calm control.  “Give me the goddamn drive,” he demanded coolly, “or I’ll put another bullet in your heart.  Something tells me you won’t be so lucky this time.”

Steve darted his eyes between the muzzle of the weapon sticking into his breast and Sitwell’s hard gaze.  He’d just about had it with all of this.  Steeling himself, he chanced that Sitwell was probably a little rusty from so many hours behind a desk and manning logistics from operations control.  And he was Captain America.  So he moved fast, faster than Sitwell could really stop, and grabbed the wrist that held the gun.  Sitwell predictably yanked the trigger, but Steve had already destroyed his aim.  Even at this close range he’d done it quickly enough for the bullet to miss anything vital and hit his shoulder instead.  He didn’t even flinch in pain, giving Sitwell’s wrist a nasty twist that snapped it.  The man howled and went down on his knees, dropping the gun.  Steve kicked it away, digging his strong fingers into Sitwell’s broken hand to keep him down.  “What’s on the drive?” he demanded.  Sitwell yowled loudly.  Steve shoved him away, and Sitwell fell into the gravel, holding his damaged limb tight to his chest.  Steve towered over him, not caring one bit if he seemed threatening or menacing.  “Answer me, goddamn it!  What’s on it?”

Sitwell was bathed in sweat now.  It rolled in fat beads from the crown of his head and down his brow and temples.  His eyes were tight with fear.  Still, he mustered a sneer.  “This really isn’t your style, Rogers,” he said, his voice teeming with false bravado.

Steve managed a tight smile.  “You don’t think so?  I’ve picked up a few things from Agent Romanoff.”

“You won’t kill me,” Sitwell gasped.  But he didn’t look as sure as he might have been.  Steve thought that was encouraging.  Maybe he could actually maintain this bluff.  He said nothing, standing over Sitwell, letting him fret and worry for a second.  “You won’t.”

“SHIELD isn’t what is used to be,” Steve said lowly, “and maybe I’m not, either.  Now what’s on the drive?  Tell me.”

Sitwell stared up at him.  “You don’t change.  And you don’t scare me, Cap.”  Steve stepped closer, clenching his hands into fists at his sides, and Sitwell actually scooted back on his rear, scrambling to get away.  He was terrified.  “Alright!” he gasped.  Steve couldn’t help but feel proud of himself, but he sure as hell didn’t let it get to his face.  “Alright!  It’s an algorithm.”

“An algorithm?”

“Yes!  An algorithm!  You know what that is, don’t you?”  Sitwell sighed and shook his head, exasperated and deeply shaken.  “God, they’re going to kill me…”

“What does the algorithm do?  What’s it for?”

Sitwell squeezed his eyes shut, like he was wondering if this was real or some sort of nightmare.  Like he couldn’t quite believe he was saying what he was saying.  “The future,” he said.

Steve shook his head.  He’d had it with this cryptic nonsense.  “What does that mean?”

“Batroc…  Rumlow delivered it to him.  He was holding it off-site to keep it safe.   They were testing it.”

“Who?”

“WorldCom.  They own the _Lemurian Star_.  They were running simulations, you know, beta-testing.  Statistical analysis.  Fine tuning it for deployment.  I’m a dead man.”

Steve couldn’t make sense of this.  Whatever was going on, it went far beyond a simple mole in SHIELD or Rumlow consorting with criminals.  “What deployment?” he asked.  Sitwell sputtered uselessly for a moment.  “What deployment?”

“Project: Insight,” Sitwell finally answered.  He spat the words out quickly, like it would be easier to talk if he did it quickly.  He turned blazing eyes on Steve, eyes that were filled with horror and rage.  “You don’t know what that is, do you?  You have no idea what’s going on.  You have no idea what’s inside SHIELD.  What SHIELD _really_ is.  You’re messing around with things you can’t possibly defeat.  Not you.  Not the Avengers.”  Steve stepped back slightly, disturbed.  Sitwell reached for him.  “They’re coming, Rogers!  And when they get here, you’re either going to be with them or you’re going to be dead.”  His words were coming faster and faster, fueled by panic.  “They probably won’t even give you a choice.”

“Who?”  Sitwell faltered anew, flushed and panting and looking at the ground like he was realizing the depths of the situation.  His eyes were wide.  Steve lost his patience, reaching down and grabbing Sitwell by the shoulder.  _“Who?”_

Sitwell opened his mouth to answer, but there was a loud crack, and his chest exploded with a spray of blood.  He screamed, grabbing for the pulsing hole in his torso, but before he even fell forward, two more shots loudly resounded in the night.  They ripped right through him like his body was nothing.  One of them exited and clipped Steve in the leg.  But it didn’t slow him as he moved, whipping his shield from his back to protect both himself and Sitwell from the sniper and crouching over the fallen man.  He grabbed Sitwell by the arm and dragged him as quickly as he could around the SUV, glancing wildly around in search of the shooter.  The night was silent, and there was no one.

Steve was breathing heavily, his thigh and shoulder throbbing and his heart pounding, as he crouched over Sitwell behind his shield.  He looked down to find the other man dead, his chest covered in blood.  Still he pressed his fingers to Sitwell’s neck in a futile search for a pulse.  Then he leaned back, too alarmed to think for an endless moment.  He had to get out of here.  There were _far_ too many places for a sniper to hide in this dark, shadowy rail yard.  Crane cabs.  Towers.  The tops of innumerable cargo cars and ship containers.  He had to escape.  Right now.

But he forced himself to stay still.  Running across open ground was an invitation to get killed.  The night was heavy and hot, and Steve listened, straining to detect any sound.  It was eerily quiet, the echo of those three shots thunderous in the heavy stillness.  Steve had hearing and sight that far surpassed a normal man’s, but this sniper was devastatingly silent and invisible.  He struggled to calm his own racing pulse and fast breathing.  The holes in Sitwell’s chest were sizeable, which indicated a large caliber bullet and a powerful gun, which then suggested the shooter could be quite far away.  Steve didn’t think so, though.  That distinctive feeling of being watched, of being _hunted_ , crawled over his skin.  He pressed his back to the train engine behind him and made himself relax and wait.  If the sniper had a clear shot of him, he’d have taken it by now.  The direction from which Sitwell had been shot suggested he didn’t.  If he stayed still, the assassin might be forced to come out of hiding.

That plan worked all too well.  Steve heard the sound of boots hitting the SUV beside him, and he whirled just in time to avoid being sprayed in the face by an automatic rifle.  The shots struck his shield, powerful enough at this close range to force him to retreat slightly.  Steve gritted his teeth, keeping his shield covering as much of himself as possible, as he moved away from the train engine.  Eventually the sniper realized this wasn’t going to accomplish anything, so he tossed the rifle and jumped down.  Steve got a decent look at him then, at least as decent as he could given the flash of silver and the metal hand barreling into his shield.  It struck _hard_ , much harder than he anticipated.  The loud _clang_ vibrated down his arms.  The gravel gave way under his boots and he was shoved back into the unforgiving train engine again.  He hardly had time to bring his other arm up and block a harsh blow directed at his flank, but he did.  And he got his knee between them and kicked the sniper back forcefully.

The man staggered.  Completely dressed in black combat gear, he blended with the sable folds of the heavy night around them.  Aside from that silver arm – Steve had seen prosthetics before of course but _never_ anything like that – he was barely visible in the darkness.  He had shoulder-length brown hair that was limp and unkempt.  He wore a black mask that completely obscured his face save for his eyes, eyes that were thickly rimmed in kohl.  Steve only had a second to see them, but there was something about them, something he couldn’t place, but something that clenched his heart.  Then the assassin was on him again.

They fought.  It was fast and hard and violent.  Steve couldn’t spare a thought to even wonder who this person was, this person who was as quick and strong and resilient as he was.  The assassin drew another handgun, rapidly pointing it at Steve who ducked behind his shield again and circled him as he fired.  All of the bullets hit vibranium, and when the clip was spent, Steve rushed in, driving his fist down into the other’s face.  He barely fell back with the blow, immediately dropping as Steve launched a roundhouse kick at him.  His foot uselessly sailed through the air, and the assassin took the opportunity to hit him across the face.  Steve retaliated, slamming his shield down into the elbow of the metal arm, but it didn’t give like he’d hoped.  The assassin snatched the edge of his shield, giving a powerful twist that spun Steve through the air and caused his arm to slip out of the straps.  The next thing he knew the sniper kicked him back into the train engine, and his shield was in the hands of the enemy.

Steve fought to control his breathing, watching the man watch him, before gathering his wits and his will and charging.  He didn’t hold back, flinging punch after punch at him, but his knuckles painfully collided with his own shield.  He directed his next attack to the left, hoping to draw the assassin away from protecting his chest.  When that succeeded, he rammed his knee into the other man.  The blow was hard enough to send him sprawling, and Steve followed, hoping to gain some advantage.  The man swept his legs out from under him and was back on his feet in a breath.  With a streak of silver Steve saw that metal fist careen down toward him.  He rolled just in time, the punch meant for his head driving into the ground where he had been, pulverizing dirt and pebbles to dust.  Steve smoothly stood, simultaneously grabbing at his shield, yanking it around, and kicking the assassin in his back.  That freed his shield, which he snatched back onto his arm, and he turned to run. 

One mighty leap onto the overturned SUV had him off the ground, and the next took him onto the top of the adjacent train car.  He sprinted down the top of the train, trying to find a spot where the next over was close enough to make the jump.  He found it.  Steve rolled when he struck the top of another freight car before bounding to the next.  And the next.  He knew the assassin was behind him, but ahead he could see the other side of the train yard.  There was a high fence and beyond that Algiers rose into the hills.  If he could make it to the city, maybe he could lose his pursuer.

It wasn’t going to be that simple.  He heard a gun firing, and he turned to protect his back.  The one second he had to slow down to do that destroyed his lead, and the assassin was there, jumping onto the train car behind him.  The man came at him, shooting again, quick blasts that Steve blocked but that prevented him from really steadying himself.  The train below them jerked into sudden motion, and Steve staggered and lost his balance.  He ended up flat on his back, and the dark shadow came fast, shooting again.  Steve felt the bullets hit his shield.  He kicked up and out and felt the satisfying contact of his boot with the other man’s chest.  The assassin was knocked back by the force, and he tripped over his feet and fell off the side of the train.

Steve sprung back upward.  He was panting as he fell into a defensive fighting stance, ignoring the pain in his shoulder and the jolt from the tender areas in his back.  The train was moving faster now as it pulled away from the shipping yards and chugged west along the coast.  His quick eyes devoured the shadows, staring intently along the sides of the freight car.  The steady _clickety-clack_ of the wheels on the rails and the squeak and squeal of the cars against each other was deafening.  When seconds upon seconds passed without any sign of the assassin, Steve sighed softly and entertained half a hope that this was over.

It wasn’t.  The barely visible flash of that metal arm in the meager light saved him from being stabbed in the throat.  The assassin threw himself back to the top of the train car, knife spinning capably.  Steve caught his balance and the blade just in time against the edge of his shield, the weapon shrieking awfully as it slid down the vibranium.  The assassin whirled and tried to stab him again, unleashing a sequence of quick slashes and cuts that Steve blocked.  He traded the knife to the other hand almost faster than Steve could see, and the blade whipped towards him before he could counter.  The knife dug into his flank and he grunted, turning and slamming his head into the assassin’s face.  The man stumbled back, and Steve grabbed the blade still embedded in his side and yanked it loose.  The pain was fiery, but he was alright; the wound wasn’t deep.  However, the man was on him again, unrelenting and unmerciful.  Who was he?  How could he fight like this?

The train rattled and rumbled, speeding along now up the hills outside Algiers.  The terrain turned rocky, lined with dry shrubs and sandy stone.  The fight continued wildly for a moment more, unhinged and violent.  Steve had the assassin about the throat, squeezing hard, his lips pulled back from his teeth with the effort of holding him like this.  He twisted, slamming the other man down onto the top of the train car with a bang and rattle and held him there.  The assassin scrambled, searching for some way to get free, the flesh and blood hand digging at Steve’s fingers and the metal one trapped under Steve’s knee.  “Who are you?” Steve demanded.  It was so damn dark he could hardly see anything except the shine of that metal arm.  “Who?  Who are you?”

A knee found its way into his belly, and Steve was flipped head over heels.  He landed roughly on his back, his shield clattering uselessly from arm and falling from the train.  The assassin drew another knife, and Steve caught it in its descent just as it was about to reach his face.  He rolled, taking the blade and the man holding it with him, and pushed him away.  He wasn’t sure this was a fight he could win.  They were so evenly matched.  He had to end this.  He had to escape.

The assassin crouched low and sprung at him.  Steve batted away the knife and the punch that followed it.  The train was high in the hills, heading toward a trestle bridge that went over a river if the swishing sound and smell of fresh water was any indication.  Steve twisted, light on his feet, and kicked at the other man twice.  The second hit and it hit hard.  The assassin staggered to the side of the car, but as he fell he reached for Steve and got a hand on his ankle.  They both went over the edge.

Steve howled, feeling the bullet in his shoulder grind against bone and muscle as his fingers latched onto the edge of the train car.  Fiery agony arced up his arm, numbing his hand.  Still, he held on, even with the entirety of the other man’s weight on his foot.  The river was churning maybe a hundred feet below them.  Steve scrambled to get his other hand onto the edge, desperate to reinforce his grasp especially when he felt the assassin pull himself up.  The metal hand was around his ankle, digging painfully into his flesh through the padding of his boot, and Steve winced and tried to kick and dislodge the sniper.  He couldn’t.  He felt fingers curl into the cloth of his uniform pants, balling into it for leverage as the assassin _climbed_ him back up to the top of the train car.  And he felt the man’s hand slip around him, reaching for his belt and the pouches attached to it.  Reaching for his pockets.

 _No way in hell!_   He bucked as frantically as he could, even if that threatened his grip on the car.  He sacrificed one hand on the edge to reach behind him and take a fistful of hair, trying to pull the weight off his back.  The man wrapped both his legs around Steve’s right thigh to hold on, reaching searching fingers into his pockets.  The pressure on his damaged shoulder was intense and miserable.  Steve finally found some purchase with the toes of his boots and pushed himself up, flinging the assassin to the side.  The river was rushing by below them.  In a matter of seconds, it would be gone.  He had to go.  His uniform was waterproof, so the USB drive and whatever was on it would be safe if he could just _get away_.  He elbowed the other man in the face and let go of the train.

The assassin caught his wrist.

Steve shouted wordlessly in anger and pain, looking up at the man clinging to the edge of the car.  The metal fingers were crushingly tight around him, refusing to release him.  Refusing to let go of his catch.  Steve struggled, trying to lift his body to get his other hand up to pry himself free, but when he did he caught a glimpse of the man’s eyes again.  Their gazes locked for just a moment.

And the assassin let him go.

It took a second before Steve realized what was happening.  And he didn’t understand at all.  Still, there was nothing he could do or say before he was tumbling down through the darkness and splashing into the river below.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Notre contact arrive dans cinq minutes._ – Our contact is arriving in five minutes.  
>  _Compris._ – Understood.  
>  _Escortez-le vers le pont. Puis appelez Durand. Je veux que tout soit bouclé dans trente minutes._ – Escort him to the bridge. Then call Durand. I want to be underway in thirty minutes.  
>  _Oui, Batroc._ – Yes, Batroc.  
>  _Le contact est ici._ – The contact is here.  
>  _Préparez le paquet. Nous sommes sur le chemin du retour._ – Prepare the package. We are on the way back.  
>  _Vous me recevez?_ – Do you read me?  
>  _A-t-il apporté de l'argent?_ – Did he bring the money?  
>  _Tenez-vous prêt maintenant._ – Get it ready now.  
>  _Tout de suite, Batroc._ – Right away, Batroc.  
>  _Ras le bol de cette connerie._ – Sick of this fucking bullshit.  
>  _Dépêchez-vous, putain! Ils arrivent!_ – Hurry the hell up! They're coming!  
>  _Qu'est-ce que c'est, ce paquet?_ – What's the package?  
>  _On va voir._ – Let's see.  
>  _Batroc? Ici Berchard. Statut. Le contact est menace de partir._ – Batroc, this is Berchard. Status. The contact is threatening to leave.  
>  _Merde Batroc. Quels sont vos ordres? On peut l'empechêr de partir._ – Shit, Batroc. What are your orders? We can stop him.  
>  _Arrêtez-le. Nous arrivons._ – Stop him. We're coming.  
>  _Batroc! Il s'en va! Batroc!_ – Batroc, he's on the move! Batroc!  
>  _Arrêtez!_ – Stop!


	5. Chapter 5

When Nick Fury didn’t want to be found, it was impossible to find him.  He could hide, _vanish_ in the truest sense of the word, like no one else could.  He was a master spy, an expert at disappearing and covering his tracks, an artisan at concealment.  He could elude anyone anywhere.  He was a ghost, a shadow, the best at what he did.

But so was Clint.  Clint had joined SHIELD as a hired killer, a man who sold his considerable services with a sword, sniper rifle, and bow to whomever had the deepest pockets.  His journey along life’s darker roads had begun in his youth, when his drunken, abusive father had killed himself and his mother and landed him and his brother, Barney, in a hellish orphanage.  They’d lived there, accosted by bullies and lost in the social services system of Iowa, before they’d split when Clint had been twelve.  They’d been fortunate enough to have been picked up by a travelling circus after that, a circus full of odd sorts, disreputable criminals, and swindlers though neither of them had realized it at the time.  Clint had always had talent at stealthy movement and a sharp eye, and he’d immediately caught the attention of Swordsman and Trickshot, two of the circus’ strongest members.  They’d trained him as a marksman and a killer, and Clint (and by extension Barney) had been drawn into their schemes.  Once it became obvious that the road they were heading down wasn’t going to lead anywhere good, Barney had tried to put a stop to it, but Clint hadn’t listened.  Then Barney had left, refusing to be drawn into that life, refusing to sacrifice his own sense of what was right.  He wouldn’t rob, wouldn’t hurt people, not even for his baby brother.  The line had to be drawn.  They’d parted at blows.  That wouldn’t be the last time.

At any rate, Barney had gone off to join the FBI, where he’d later been killed in the line of duty.  Clint had become a marine for a period when he’d foolishly thought he could get past his anger and bitterness and be something good.  A soldier.  He’d tried to repent.  But he’d discovered that he wasn’t terribly proficient at taking orders (well, he’d known that before from the trouble he’d had in school and with the police and with his brother and pretty much with anyone who had authority over him).  He liked to do things on his own, to get it done his way, to be self-sufficient and self-directed.  And he’d realized in fairly short order that the anger and bitterness were as much a part of him as his eyes or his heart and weren’t just going to go away.  His skillset and mindset weren’t overly suited for a normal life (at least, what he’d been taught a normal life should be.  He didn’t think he’d ever had one).  Barney’s fate hadn’t much deterred him from the dangers of work as an assassin; if anything, it had pushed him closer.  If it hadn’t been for Nick Fury chasing him down one night in the slums of Mumbai to procure his services for SHIELD, he probably would have died or lost himself.  He wasn’t sure which would have been worse.

Fury had come to hire him as an assassin.  If that wasn’t an indication of how far he’d fallen into darkness, he didn’t know what was.  He’d made a hell of a reputation for himself in the black world of killers-for-hire and bounty hunters, and SHIELD had been in need of his skillset to eliminate a member of the Iranian government who was funneling money into terrorist groups in Palestine.  To this day he still didn’t know if Fury had truly needed his help or had simply wanted a way in, an excuse to get close to him and turn him because the job had been a setup and the CIA had been waiting with warrants for his arrest.  He’d been alone in a prison cell in the US when Fury had come and offered Clint a choice: whatever sort of fate he would find at the mercy of the CIA or a job with SHIELD.  Clint had never forgotten what Fury had said to him.  _“You have talent, but talent won’t get you anywhere without direction.  Work with me, and you’ll always know your place.”_   To a kid with no home, no family, and no future beyond the next kill and the next payment, that had meant something.

So SHIELD had become his life.  It hadn’t been easy at first.  Fury had taught him things about espionage he’d never imagined were possible.  Things about distance, about focus, about deciding when and how to pull the trigger, about manipulation and murder, but things about right and wrong as well.  About making sure the ends justified the means.  Despite his training under Fury (or maybe because of it), it hadn’t been easy to let himself trust others, and he’d been something of a loner for years before he’d come under Phil Coulson’s wing.  Coulson had been… _different_ from the other senior agents, with knowing eyes that didn’t judge and wise words that stuck with Clint for years to come.  Coulson had been the one to ease that anger and bitterness, not get rid of it because it was _never_ going to go away, but make it manageable and something Clint could use to make himself better.  Clint had led the STRIKE Team for a couple years, SHIELD’s finest assassin and best black ops soldier, an asset unlike any other.  And when he’d been dispatched to kill Black Widow, his life had changed again.  Now he was the one teaching and guiding, setting someone else on a better path.  For the first time in his life, he’d felt stable, certain of where he belonged and what he needed to do.

Then Loki had stuck his cruel, greedy fingers into his head, and everything had gone to hell.

Coulson was dead.  Despite saving the world as one of the Avengers, Clint had apparently been blacklisted by the World Security Council as a threat because of the damage he’d done while under Loki’s control.  And Natasha was with Rogers.  That hadn’t bothered him so much when it had happened, but it was getting to him now, more and more.  It wasn’t so much that he loved her (he thought he did, but not so much in a romantic way).  And it wasn’t that he didn’t like Rogers.  The guy was Captain America.  It was impossible not to like him for that reason alone.  Clint didn’t know him all that well despite working together during the Battle of New York because the vast majority of the time leading up to the fight he’d spent at the whims of the enemy.  They’d done a few missions together with the STRIKE Team when Steve had first joined SHIELD, and Clint had found him to be as loyal, friendly, and agreeable as he’d seemed.  Maybe the relationship between Steve and Natasha was improbable, but it was working for both of them.  Clint could see that in Natasha now, see how happy she was (if happiness was something one could use to describe anyone in their line of work).  It wasn’t obvious, but she was at peace with herself for the first time since Clint had met her.  He was glad about that.  He was glad that she had found a good man to love her.

But the _loss_ of her in his life hurt more than he’d anticipated.  She was still there, had been since Rogers had been put on medical leave, but she wasn’t who she’d had been.  She was someone else, someone new, someone forged by what had happened in Crimea and what she felt for Rogers.  Someone calmer and different than he’d known.  And she didn’t need him anymore, at least not like she had.  Not as an outlet for her pain and frustration and fear.  Not as her confidant.  It bothered him.  He wasn’t jealous (alright, maybe he was a little), but he was lost without her.  It wasn’t as if she’d been reliant on him (far from it, in fact), but there had always been this trust between them, this unwavering faith she’d had in him, and now that faith was in someone else.

And her faith in SHIELD was shaken.  He knew it was.  His was, too.  What had happened to Rogers had injured them all somehow.  Clint couldn’t put his finger on what or how or when, but something had changed.  It had been growing for a while, stirring in the shadows.  As much as he had tried to be dismissive of Garanin’s warning, he couldn’t deny that it had stoked the fires of his doubts.  SHIELD had been changing since New York.  It was almost like Fury bringing Captain America onboard had been a last-ditch effort to keep things noble and just.  And when Captain America had come home from Russia with his back broken and a bullet in his heart, Clint knew everything was now coming to a head.  And he wasn’t sure what could be done to stop it.

So here he was, seated in the back of the SUV parked in the Triskelion’s dimly-lit garage, waiting patiently.  And when Fury finally opened the driver’s door and slid inside, he didn’t waste any time.  “What the hell is going on?”

Nothing ever surprised Nick Fury, not that Clint was there or that he had somehow figured out his schedule and tracked his movements all day through the Triskelion like a shadow without the Director noticing.  He afforded his top agent a glance in the rearview mirror and sighed.  “Start engine,” he ordered.  The masculine voice of the SUV’s computer system responded to the command, and the car came to life.  “I’m late for a meeting with Senator Stern and the Armed Services Committee, Barton.  And you have a job to do, if I’m not mistaken.”

“Right.  Escorting some scientists from the Sandbox to New York.  They can wait for their security guard.”  Clint didn’t make any effort to hide his disdain for the orders he’d received from Hill that morning.  Orders for a mission that was like all the other missions he’d been assigned over the last few months.  Clint leaned forward in his seat.  “I want to know where you sent Rogers.  He’s overdue two days.  Where is he?”

Fury’s glare turned sharp and irritated.  “How the hell do you know he’s overdue?”  Then he sighed in annoyance.  “He told Romanoff, and Romanoff told you.”  Honestly, it hadn’t been difficult to figure out that Steve was gone on a mission.  Even if Natasha hadn’t told him, the rumors around the Triskelion had been rampant that Secretary Pierce and Fury had had some kind of debate concerning reinstating Rogers to active duty.  Secretary Pierce had allegedly won the argument, but Rogers had never reported in, at least not that anyone had noticed.  And later that day the Triskelion had been buzzing with rumors that Rogers was on his way to New York to meet with Tony Stark, that he was benched until he had a full medical and psych assessment, that he was quitting SHIELD, that he was _gone_ doing anything and everything other than what he was really doing.  Clint knew the signs of a cover-up well enough.  “Son of a bitch,” Fury grunted.

“The guy’s a soldier, not a spy,” Clint said.  “With all due respect, you shouldn’t have expected anything else.”

Fury didn’t appreciate that sentiment.  “Who else knows?”

“No one.  Why does it matter?  What did you send him to do?”  Fury looked away, clenching his jaw in anger and throwing the car into drive.  He sped from the garage, taking the turns a little rougher and sharper than necessary.  Clint said nothing as Fury drove down the bridge over the Potomac and headed out into DC.  He let the silence persist a moment more, uncertain if there was anything he could say or do to wrest what he wanted to know from Fury.  “Natasha’s worried.”

Apparently that wasn’t it.  “She needs to remember she’s an agent of SHIELD, not some pining girlfriend,” Fury hotly responded.  There was something else in his voice, though.  Clint had rarely heard it over the years, but it was there now.  Guilt.  “Did she put you up to this, Barton?”

“No, sir.”  That morning Natasha had approached him with her worries.  He could see immediately from her pale face and uncertain eyes that she was scared.  Someone who didn’t know her as well as he did might not have seen the signs.  She hadn’t asked him to do this, to hunt Fury down and corner him like this.  She’d only inquired if he’d heard anything or seen anything, _anything_ about Rogers.  He hadn’t.  And he’d asked her if she’d spoken with Pierce about Rogers’ departure.  She hadn’t.  The quick encounter had left them both wanting more information, some sense that this suspicion wasn’t getting worse like an untended wound festering with infection.  The rumors swirling around Rogers’ disappearance were spinning so wickedly fast that it was impossible to determine who was spreading them and who was listening.  And Natasha had been unsettled by it all.  Clint always did what he could for her without her asking.  He was here because it was so engrained into him to help her, to protect her and guide her, that he couldn’t do anything else.  “But she’s got good reason to be worried.”

As Fury drove the SUV onto the causeway headed towards the city, his eye glanced in the rearview mirror again, and Clint knew right then and there that he was worried, too.  That small look was telling.  And Fury wasn’t just concerned about Rogers’ well-being.  He was afraid over something more.  Clint had figured whatever Fury had sent Rogers out to do was important, so much so as to dispatch Captain America and go through all that effort to hide it.  But seeing that small crack in Fury’s normally impenetrable façade was enough to confirm everything he feared.  “Send me out,” he offered.  “Let me at least assess the situation.  Let me find him.”

“It’s too damn late,” Fury commented lowly.

“If he’s in trouble, we have to help him,” Clint said.  “He may be the world’s best soldier, but he’s probably shit at covering his tracks.  And if someone’s captured or killed him, I doubt they’re gonna keep quiet about it.  I can find him and bring him back.”

“The last thing we need is having to explain another agent out in the field on a mission that shouldn’t exist,” Fury said darkly.  They were deeper into the city now, heading toward the government buildings.  Clint tried to swallow down his frustration.  Honestly, he hadn’t expected Fury to agree to let him go after Rogers.  SHIELD simply didn’t operate that way, and he damn well knew it.  An agent was expected to get it done, and unless there was solid, irrefutable proof that the mission had failed or the agent’s life was in substantial and imminent danger, backup wasn’t sent in.  Being a couple of days late did not constitute compelling evidence.  Clint had spent his life compartmentalizing, knowing just enough to get the job done without questioning what he had or hadn’t been told.  He’d convinced himself even before coming to SHIELD when he’d been an assassin for hire that it was better he not know the truth.  The truth was a liability, a collar and a crutch, a weakness that he could rarely afford.  This system worked well for both the agent and the handler; ignorance was true protection.  But now…  He just needed to know.  If there was a threat, he needed to see it and understand it and face it head on.  He needed to do what Rogers always did: stand in the way of evil.

He didn’t care for this damn role reversal.  “What the hell’s going on, Nick?”  He rarely called Fury by his first name, particularly in these last years when he’d fallen so completely into his place at SHIELD.  “I feel like everything’s just… falling apart.  It started months ago, maybe after New York, but the Cap getting shot just pushed it and now…”  Clint shook his head and sagged slightly into the backseat of the SUV.  He suddenly felt older and worn.  Jaded.  “If there’s something I can do, I’ll do it.”

“It’s not that simple.”

Clint shook his head, angered and frightened by the note of defeat disgracing Fury’s tone.  “Make it that simple.”

“Incoming call from Agent Hill,” the computer declared.  “Emergency.  Security encryption enabled.”

Fury glanced at Clint in the rearview mirror again.  The stiffening of his body was slight, hardly anything.  Clint’s heart pumped just a bit faster and harder against his ribs.  For a second he feared Fury would cut him out, not take the call or even pull over to the goddamn side of the road and make him get out of the car.  But he didn’t.  “Put it through.”

Hill’s face appeared in the holographic interface on the upper right hand corner of the windshield.  “Hill, this had better be important,” Fury irately said.

“Sir, there’s a situation developing.  Things are chaotic, sketchy, and I’m not sure where this is coming from.  Secretary Pierce apparently sent the STRIKE Team out to assess the situation, but–”

“What is it?” Fury demanded.  His tone was sharp and impatient.

Hill hesitated a moment, but she was too hardened an agent to do more than that.  “Reports are coming in that Sitwell’s dead.”

Fury stopped the car at a red light, and that was just as well because time seemed to slow to a halt for a second.  Clint could hardly believe what he’d heard.  Sitwell dead?  _Holy shit._   “Where?” Fury asked.  “When?”

“It’s not clear right now.  The STRIKE Team is refusing to disclose information to me.  They want to speak directly with Pierce.”  Clint’s mind was reeling at that.  Sitwell was a decent guy and an excellent agent; what the hell had he been doing out in the field on an op of which neither Fury nor Hill had been aware?  And there was a chain of command in SHIELD for a reason.  Hill was Deputy Director.  _Everyone_ answered to her, with the exception of the Director and the Secretary of Defense.  “I’m trying to get a handle on it, sir, but something’s not right about this.”  Fury didn’t seem fazed.  Clint wasn’t sure if it was because he’d expected something like this or if he was simply too experienced to have the grief over the death of a subordinate pierce his exterior.  “They’re saying he was involved in some sort of botched deal with pirates in Algiers, but there’s nothing on the mission roster and I can’t confirm that at this point.  I can’t even confirm he’s dead.”

That did get through Fury’s cool visage.  His hands tightened on the steering wheel.  “I need you here now.  Deep shadow conditions.”

Hill’s jaw clenched.  “I need four hours.”

“You have three.”  Fury didn’t have a chance to say anything more.  Clint lurched forward as their SUV was suddenly and violently rammed in the rear.  His head smacked against the leather of Fury’s headrest, and for a moment he couldn’t breathe, pain slicing through his brain and leaving him dazed.  When he finally managed to focus and suck enough air through clenched teeth to catch his wind, the car was struck again on his side.  The door was reinforced so it didn’t buckle, but he was thrown across the backseat by the impact.  The engine roared as Fury floored it, but the rear of the SUV was elevated on top of the hood of the car behind him.  The tires weren’t making contact with the road.  “Shit!”

Clint shook his head, trying to clear his vision, and reached for his gun in his thigh holster.  He frantically glanced outside to find three DC Metro police cars surrounding them, red and blue lights flashing.  There was also an armored van full of SWAT officers, and they were quickly moving to form a perimeter.  Before he’d even digested what he was seeing, their SUV was hit a third time by another cop car backing into it from the front.  They were effectively trapped.  Clint watched, wide-eyed, as the SWAT team unloaded what looked like some sort of battering ram from the van.  They’d obviously come prepared to deal with an armored car.  “These aren’t cops,” he said.

“DC Metro dispatch shows no units in this area,” the computer added.

“No shit!” Fury snarled.  He groaned loudly, and Clint scrambled forward.  The Director’s arm was badly broken, so much so that there was blood on the outside of his leather jacket.  His face was cut above his good eye and his nose was oozing.  The SUV began to shudder as it was peppered with gunfire.  The bullets smacked uselessly against the sides and windows, splaying out like puddles as the reinforced glass absorbed their impacts.  The dull, muffled thud of each shot against the car was loud.  “Get us out of here!”

The computer calmly responded, “Engines are offline.”

“Flight?”

“Offline.”

“Communications!”

“Offline.  Recommend anesthetic injection.”  Clint was already on it.  He’d slid into the forward passenger seat and had grabbed the emergency kit from the glove box.  He took the pre-loaded syringe and unceremoniously stabbed the tip of it into Fury’s thigh.  The Director couldn’t restrain a gasp of pain.  “Window integrity down to 82%.”

Clint yanked his phone from his pocket and thumbed the emergency connection to the Triskelion.  Before he could make the call, however, Fury reached over with his unbroken arm and grasped his hand hard enough to be painful.  “Don’t,” he ordered.  His eye was filled with pain and fear. He said nothing more, but it was painfully clear what was going on.  SHIELD was compromised.  SHIELD couldn’t be trusted.  Fury shouted to the computer, “Reboot, damn it!  Now!”

“Rebooting.  Window integrity down to 61%.”  The display was tracking the bullet hits and measuring how each peeled just a bit more from the integrity of the car’s armor.  “Recommend deploying counter measures.”  The entirety of the car violently rocked to the right, spilling Fury into Clint and Clint into the passenger door.  Another blow of the battering ram into the driver’s window damaged it even more.  “Window integrity at 30%.  Restoring engine power in twenty-five seconds.”

Clint winced at every beat of the automatic rifles outside into the car.  “We have to get out of here,” he gasped, sweeping his eyes over the cop cars and SWAT Team surrounding them.

Fury tipped his head back.  He was in agony, even with the painkiller.  “Wait,” he managed.  That was damn hard to do with the car being battered and maligned by the unending barrage of gunfire and that thing ramming the window.  Fury drew a deep breath.  “Counter measures are in the central console, but _wait_.”

The order left no room for question.  The ram hit again and the window moaned and whimpered in protest.  The computer was flashing warnings all over the holographic display in red.  “Window integrity at 1%.” 

Clint held his breath, fighting to keep himself still.  He realized what Fury intended for him to do.  “You stay down,” he said, hoping his command, too, left no room to question.

The next collision of the battering ram to the window shattered it in a spray of glass.  “Now!” Fury ordered, and the mini-gun exploded up out of the central console.  Clint snatched it, waiting only a breath for Fury to completely recline his seat, and immediately laid down a heavy suppressing fire outside the window, rotating the weapon in a wide arc to get as many of the cops and soldiers shooting at them as he could.  They all went down, surprised and dismayed.  The gun was also equipped with an incendiary device launcher of which Clint made ample and quick use.  He fired a rocket into the cop car pinning them on the left, and the resulting explosion was enough to jostle the SUV free from the hood of the vehicle behind them.  The next he sent at the SWAT van, reducing it to a ball of flames.

“Power restored,” the computer calmly declared.

“Engines at full!” Fury bellowed, and the SUV roared forward, tires spinning at full throttle.  The stench of burning rubber and fire filled the car.  “Reverse!”  The car quickly shifted, and they rocked back, dislodging themselves further.  Clint fired another rocket as more cop cars flooded the scene behind them.  One of the remaining vehicles rammed them from the other side.  Fury cried out as his arm was jostled.  Clint lifted his body, grabbing the seat control and simultaneously shoving it as far back and as reclined as it could go.  He worked quickly to grab Fury and pull him into the passenger seat.  It was awkward and painful, but they managed to switch places.  At least Fury was slightly more protected on the other side of the car. 

Clint pulled the driver’s seat upright and strapped in.  “Go!”

The SUV launched forward with a jolt, and they were free.  They sped down the street at full speed.  “Give Agent Barton control!” Fury ordered the computer.  Clint grabbed the steering wheel and drove his foot down hard on the gas.  Ahead there was traffic and a lot of it.  And behind there was a wail of sirens and a blur of flashing lights.  They were being chased.

“Shit,” Clint murmured, turning the wheel to the right to skirt around a truck.  He darted back to the left lane.  “We need to get out of the city!”

The computer was frantically working, calculating the best way to a SHIELD safe house.  They were located all over the country, and Clint knew for a fact there was one outside of DC on the Potomac near an abandoned dam.  If SHIELD was compromised, it perhaps wasn’t a long-term solution, but it was all they had at that point.  His mind was racing, twisting with questions about who and what and _why_ , but he forced it all down.  Their pursuers were keeping pace with them, matching Clint’s quick moves in and out of the sea of cars surrounding them.  The congestion was thick.  It was goddamn rush hour of course.

“There is heavy traffic ahead on Roosevelt Bridge,” the computer cautioned.  “Turn left.”

Clint turned left sharply, and Fury howled in pain, but that avoided the unmoving mass of cars in front of them.  It didn’t, however, shake their tails.  Gunfire slammed again against the exterior of the car, and the computer flashed new warnings about damage and structural instability at which Clint couldn’t afford to glance.  He swerved sharply to the right, avoiding traffic moving across an intersection as he tore through a red light.  The wail of sirens was about the only warning he had before the SUV was hit in the next intersection, police chasers wildly turning into them and nearly ramming them from the road.  Clint gritted his teeth, competently maintaining control of the SUV even as the cop car pushed up against the driver’s side.  One of the officers pointed a gun at him through the hole where the driver’s window had been, firing in hopes of hitting him.  Clint pressed himself back into his seat.  The cop was leaning up now, reaching across the small distance between them to push his gun inside their car and shoot.  Clint tried to pull away, but another police car was on the right side, trapping the SUV in between them.  The cop snarled, yanking on the trigger of his gun, and Clint ducked.  But a breath later the man fell back, a bullet in his head put there by Fury.  The Director sat up a bit, Clint’s discarded gun in his hand, and was firing through the destroyed driver’s window at the cops right beside them.  Clint turned into the cop car on his left, the screech of metal loud and shrill.  That forced the car into the median, where it trampled flowers before hitting a tree.  Another was right there to take its place.

“Do we have communications back?  Open a channel to Hill!” Fury demanded.

“Negative,” the computer answered.  “Turn right at the next intersection.”

Clint missed it.  He slammed on the brakes.  Fury barely had a moment to brace himself on the dashboard.  The quick choice paid off when both of their escorts sped on and crashed into the traffic ahead.  Clint threw the car in reverse, not caring about the other vehicles honking and screaming past them and barely avoiding hitting them.  He looked over his shoulder, weaving through the mess of cars coming at them backwards until he was back on the other side of the intersection.  He took the turn quickly, avoiding the slew of vehicles still chasing them.  “Turn right again.”  There were cars stopped ahead.  He didn’t see a way to avoid plowing into some of them, which he did, pushing as far to the right side corner as possible.  He clipped the back of a sedan, spinning it, before tearing across the sidewalk.  _Get out of the way!_ he thought desperately, fighting the urge to slow down for the pedestrians scrambling for cover in front of him.  He took the turn fast, almost too fast, but the SUV stayed on the road as they sped down this less congested street.  He glanced at the map being displayed for him on the HUD, his mind racing through the steps and turns.  It didn’t matter.  At the end of this street there was a blockade of police vehicles.  “Shit.  Hold on!”

He swung wide and grabbed the parking brake, screeching as he spun the car around.  Wheels screeched and the engine groaned with the mistreatment, and he worried for a split second that he’d made a horrendous mistake because the street didn’t seem wide enough for this maneuver.  But it was.  Just barely.  Turned completely around, he released the parking brake and barreled back down the street from where they’d come.  At the end another few cop cars had gathered.  Clint grabbed the mini-gun, pulling it loose from the console.  Keeping his left hand on the wheel, he launched the weapon’s final missile at the congregation of the vehicles.  The explosion was sizeable, the cars going up in a ball of red and yellow, and people screamed to get away.  Clint drove the car straight through the flames and smoke, smacking into the mangled carcass of one of the vehicles before speeding away as fast as he could.

“We need to get off the grid,” he said to Fury.  “Who the hell are these people?”

If Fury knew, he wasn’t saying.  As they cut across another intersection, the car was struck again on the driver’s side.  Clint cried out from the impact, his leg nearly crushed as the already compromised door buckled.  They were thrown into the oncoming traffic.  Clint’s heart was painfully thundering as he reacted faster than he thought he could, turning tightly and rapidly to move through the cars and trucks coming at them.  He took the first opportunity he could find to get back on the other side of the road.

There was a loud bang, and the car spun wildly out of his control.  He knew immediately what had happened.  He’d had his tires shot out in more situations than he cared to remember, and that helpless, shocked feeling never got better.  He struggled to get a handle on the SUV’s erratic path, turning into the spin to try and restore some stability, but another tire exploded beneath them and it was impossible.  “Hang on!” he cried.  The car struck the median and flipped.

The world seemed to spin forever before they hit the ground.  Clint blacked out for a second during the impact, pain rushing up his body and striking right into his brain.  He tasted blood in his mouth as the car screeched and screamed and rolled.  Glass crunched.  The noise and pressure was unbearable.

When he came back to himself, he found the SUV on its side.  He was still strapped into the driver’s seat, and Fury was sprawled across the passenger door below him, moaning.  Clint gasped, reaching a shaking hand to his leg and yanking a sizeable shard of glass from it.  The warm rush of blood combined with the pain and dizziness was nauseating, and he swallowed the burn of bile down from the back of his throat.  He unstrapped himself and opened the door, which was harder than it should have been given the damage done to it and the fact he had to push it up and not out.  “Sir,” he called, reaching for Fury’s trembling form.  Over the settling of the car and the pounding of his pulse, he could hear people screaming.  He looked through the windshield.  They were still on the road, and they were out in the open.  “Sir!  Give me your hand!  We have to get out of here!  We have to go now!”

Fury groaned but pushed himself up onto his hands and knees.  Clint was already out of the driver’s side, his arms shaking as he pulled himself onto the exterior of the car.  He immediately felt exposed standing there, spending a precious moment glancing around at the tops of buildings and along the streets.  People were crying and running in panic.  There was fire, and he could hear the wail of distant sirens.  Clint reached back down into the car, grabbing Fury’s outstretched hand.  He groaned with the effort of pulling the other man up, Fury scrambling against the seats to aid him.  After what felt like an eternity of struggling, they succeeded in escaping the overturned car.

Clint helped the SHIELD Director down onto the pavement.  But they didn’t take one step before the distinctive crack of a sniper rifle echoed down the street.  Fury cried out, the shot driving through his chest and slamming into the pavement.  Another happened immediately after the first, and Fury went down to the ground with a cry.

Clint was wide-eyed and horrified, throwing himself over Fury’s body to guard him.  He found himself trembling, trembling in fear for the first time in forever, as he squeezed his eyes shut and held the other man as tightly as he could.  He could feel Fury’s breath, hot and fast, against his neck.  He could feel the warm wetness of blood seeping up into his clothes.

“Barton,” Fury whispered.  Clint pulled back slightly so that he could see Fury’s face.  The man was in excruciating pain, his eye dull with the darkness of death, blood painting his lips.  He could barely breathe.  “Clint…  Don’t trust anyone.”

Clint felt more than heard the thudding of boots striking the pavement beside him.  He whirled on instinct, pulling a combat knife from his belt and slicing toward the looming shadow.  He struck nothing, and a hand that was cold and made of metal grabbed him by the throat and lifted him off Fury’s body.  “ _On moi_ ,” murmured a voice from behind a black mask.  Then he was thrown aside, simply discarded like he meant nothing.  He hit the SUV hard, his head snapping into it, and crumpled to the road.  He could only stay awake a moment more, but it was long enough to see the sniper level a handgun at Fury’s unprotected chest and pull the trigger.

* * *

Nick Fury was dead.

_Dead._

He’d been assassinated in broad daylight on the streets of DC.  _Assassinated.  Murdered._ He was dead.

Clint was in the morgue, staring at Fury’s body.  They’d been brought to the hospital.  There was nothing anyone could have done.  Fury had been shot three times, twice at range with a gun powerful enough to cause massive internal damage, and once point blank.  He’d died on the street just as the EMTs had gotten to him.  Clint had regained consciousness when the ambulances had arrived, and he’d crawled back to Fury’s lifeless body despite the men surrounding him and the concussion torturing him.  He had pulled the other man into his arms, shocked into a stupor, trembling and lost.  His mind had simply been unable to believe it, unable to accept it, even with Fury bleeding into his hands and his form limp and his eyes closed.  No breath.  No pulse.  _He was dead._

Even now, he couldn’t quite believe it.  Even now, as he stood there unable to tear his eyes from Fury’s lax face, he couldn’t _believe_ that Fury, the one who had taught them and guided them and led them all, was gone.  Fury had always seemed so aloft, so damn invincible.  Untouchable.  Clint gritted his teeth and looked down.  He’d washed the blood off his hands, but damn if he couldn’t still see it.  _Feel_ it.

He heard the door behind him open, and he turned as Natasha stepped inside.  Her eyes were wide and empty, as if the shock had jolted everything out of her.  When her gaze drifted from Clint to Fury’s body, she faltered.  He watched it sink into her – _Fury’s dead_ – and the pain came, hard and fast.  He saw the glimmer of tears, tears that she didn’t try to hide, as her feet carried her closer to Fury’s body where it lay on a stretcher, mostly covered in a white drape.  She also looked lost, as lost and shaken as Clint felt.  “What happened?” she asked, even though he was certain she already knew every horrid detail.

“Ambush.”  He hadn’t thought to speak.  His voice just came, the ragged word slipping past lips that felt as numb and wrecked as the rest of him.  He didn’t expect that she would blame him, that _anyone_ would blame him, even if he deserved blame which part of him most definitely thought he did.  He’d been with Fury.  No matter what, no matter how random and unexpected the attack had been, it had been his responsibility to ensure their Director’s survival, and he had failed.  That was too painful to think about, so that, like so much else in his life, he shoved aside.  He focused on what he could do, what he knew.  “They looked like DC Metro cops, but they weren’t.  Too highly trained.”

“What about the sniper?” Natasha asked softly.

Clint sighed, thinking about that voice and those steel fingers pressing into his neck.  He had bruises that would take days to fade in the soft flesh of his throat.  “I didn’t get a good look at him.  Brown hair.  Spoke Russian.  He had a metal hand.”  He closed his eyes and looked away.  “He could have killed me.”  But he hadn’t.  Clint didn’t understand.  He didn’t know if he should be relieved.

“Ballistics?”

“Three slugs.  Aside from the one from the Berreta, they’re Soviet made, no rifling.  Untraceable.  And the one from the handgun is mush.  Fucking useless.”  Despite his rage and spite over the dead end, he noticed the stiffening of Natasha’s shoulders.  She stepped closer to Fury’s body.  Now the tears were loose, having pooled in her eyes until they’d finally fallen free.  Clint watched her stare at Fury, stare like she could _will_ the life back into him.  “You know something about it?” he softly asked.  The slugs were Soviet made, after all, and Black Widow had once been a Soviet spy, a tool for the KGB.  Natasha didn’t answer, rubbing her arms through her green coat.  Her eyes never left Fury’s face.  “Natasha?”

Her lips shifted around a breathy word or two.  Clint couldn’t really hear them, but he knew they were spoken in Russian.  Natasha reached forward a shaking hand, slowly and tentatively.  It took a few long moments spent deep in miserable silence before she conjured up the courage to lay her palm on Fury’s forehead.  She sagged when she did so, like some fervent wish had kept her strong and going, like a desperate hope that this was a nightmare and not real had been dashed by the contact of her warm fingers to Fury’s cold brow.  Shame and guilt twisted Clint’s stomach until he was nauseous.  When he looked at her now, he saw the young woman he’d brought back from Russia when he should have killed her.  He saw the broken woman struggling to come to terms with what she had done to Captain America.  He saw the life they’d tried to make for themselves, the straight life filled with good intentions, slipping away.  “How did this happen?” she whispered.

He didn’t have an answer, at least not one that involved useful facts.  He had only his own anger and his own guilt.  His own sorrow.  He closed his eyes against the sting of tears.  No matter who Nick Fury was or what he had become, the man had been a mentor to him, one of a few he’d had in his life.  Someone Clint had respected, admired even.  And like the other men he’d held in so high regard, Fury was dead.  _Dead._   “Jesus, Nat,” he whispered, his voice a breathy sob.

She was there for him then, her arms around him and her fingers weaving through his hair and tucking his forehead to her shoulder.  Clint choked on another cry, a ragged, awful thing caught in his throat, and closed his eyes.  He was never this weak, this open, but right now he felt so low that he couldn’t manage his normal equanimity or even a shred of strength.  Not with everything for which SHIELD stood lying dead on the table in front of him.  Nick Fury was dead.  Nick Fury, who’d given him a chance when, considering his checkered past and murderous skillset, he deserved none.  Who’d believed in him when he’d brought Natasha in front of him and insisted she could be redeemed, that he could redeem her as he had been redeemed.  That man had died in front of him today, and he hadn’t done a damn thing to stop it.  He couldn’t see the path behind them that had led them to this point, but he was damn sure he should have.  He should have seen it coming.  He should have _done something_ to stop this.

She held him, and he held himself together.  It was nice to feel her arms around him again.  It was nice to have her support him for this moment, just as she had when Loki had taken his mind and body hostage.  He’d missed her so much, more than he was willing to admit to her or to himself.  She tightened her arms around him, maybe as much for her comfort as it was for his because she was trembling against him.  Maybe it wasn’t his place anymore, but he sank into her warm embrace, breathing deeply and letting himself relax for the first time in what felt like forever.  He drifted, going back to when things were quieter and simpler (as if things had ever been quiet and simple in their dark and dangerous lives).  At least then he’d known who he was and what he wanted and what he needed to be.  Now Fury was dead, and he didn’t know who to trust.

He still trusted her, though.  No matter what, he always wanted to.

She wasn’t as strong as she was pretending to be.  Her hands were tight in the back of his shirt, her chin on his shoulder, her breath shallow against his neck.  “What now, Clint?” she asked.  Her voice was barely anything, a meager shade of its normal confidence, poise, and strength.  “What do we do now?”

Again he didn’t have an answer.  _Find the bastards that did this.  Kill them.  Kill all of them._   Vengeance and justice and retribution for destroying their leader and threatening their world.  It was pleasant to think it, and it was good in theory, but in reality it was going to be damn difficult, and they both knew it.  And it was terrifying.  Fury was one of the strongest, most powerful men alive.  It would take someone equally powerful, or even more powerful, to assassinate him like this.  The fact that such potent, viable evil existed in the world did not bode well for any of them.  And they had been struck hard and fast and exactly where it hurt the most, where they would bleed away their strength.  So Clint didn’t know what to say.  She’d rarely ever asked him for reassurance like this.  Maybe never.  He didn’t know what to tell her to make this right.

His phone beeped in his pocket.  In the heavy silence, it was cripplingly loud.  Clint pulled away from Natasha, fishing the device free and thumbing it on.  He read the message on the screen, and wariness wormed its way into his heart.  “They want us back at the Triskelion.  They’re calling a meeting in operations control.”

Natasha didn’t look up.  Her watery eyes were still fixated on Fury’s still, lifeless face.  Clint watched her for a second, struggling himself to pull the ragged ends of his composure back together.  Eventually she reached for the sheet on Fury’s body and tugged it gently up and over his face and head.  She raised her chin after that, almost defiantly, squaring her shoulders and finding a deep breath to ground herself.  Then she turned and looked at Clint.  “Are you okay?”

His head hurt.  His leg hurt.  His heart was a dead weight in his chest.  “Fine.”  He appraised her, the pallor of her cheeks and the agony in her eyes.  “You?”

She nodded.  “Yes.”

“Then let’s go.”

* * *

The minute they stepped into operations control within the Triskelion, Clint knew a horrible situation was about to get infinitely worse.  Operations control was a large room, teeming with monitors and workstations.  Long rows of consoles fanned back from the front, dozens and dozens of stations filled with techs and agents.  At the front was a massive, state of the art display that was directly interfaced into one of the most powerful computer systems in the world, one that was capable of tracking, processing, and analyzing exabytes of data in real-time.  SHIELD had installations all over the globe and the largest military aircraft ever created in the helicarrier, but this one room was the heart and soul of its day to day functioning.  Everything that was anything came through this place.

Right now it was teeming with agents.  Clint had never seen the room so full.  There was a low hum of chatter, a rumble of questions and worries and whispered words of grief and shock.  The air was somber and tense.  All of SHIELD was reeling, crumbling.  This had been an attack against them all.  And they had questions, questions to which they wanted answers.  Clint could feel their eyes on him, doubtful and suspicious.  He stood straighter, his arms folded across his chest, ignoring the murmurs.  Natasha was stiff beside him.  She hadn’t said a word the entire ride back to the Triskelion from the hospital.  Clint couldn’t discern what she was thinking.  She was rarely readable, rarely open.  He wanted to read her now, though.  He wanted to know what she felt, that she was with him, that they were together in this.  The distance was back between them, cold and immeasurable, miles wide though she was right beside him as she always was.  She was gone from him, grieving and thinking and worrying, and he knew why.

He watched with narrowed eyes, trying to keep himself calm and cool, as the doors to the left of operations control opened.  Pierce walked inside, flanked by SHIELD guards and the STRIKE Team.  Security around the Triskelion had been radically increased in the last few hours, with helicopters and quinjets guarding the perimeter and the bridge essentially locked down.  No one was getting in or out of the complex without proper clearance.  Still, last he checked, the STRIKE Team wasn’t usually relegated to protecting political officers like this.  Seeing Brock Rumlow, Jack Rollins, and the others flank Pierce was unsettling.  Clint’s last experience with them after he and Natasha had returned from killing Brushov had left a hell of a sour taste in Clint’s mouth.

Pierce walked to the center of the room.  “Quiet down, everyone,” he calmly called.  The hushed murmur of conversation was slow to stop.  “Everyone, listen up.  Quiet down.”  His second command did the trick.  The dozens and dozens of agents and techs in the room were still, and all eyes were on the Secretary of Defense.  Clint shifted his weight and appraised the older man.  Pierce looked grief-stricken.  “Never in my worst nightmares did I think I’d ever have to come before you like this.”  He shook his head, his hands on his hips, and for a moment it seemed like he was battling his emotions.  He released a deep breath that was thunderous in the absolute silence.  “Nick Fury was a hero.  He was a leader.  He was a symbol of strength, integrity, and courage to which we all aspire.  He was my friend.  Now he’s dead.”  Clint resisted a shudder crawling up his back.  He glanced to Natasha, but her eyes were empty, hollow, and she was staring at the floor. 

Pierce gathered himself and appraised the room.  His eyes narrowed.  “His loss today will not go unanswered.  That I promise you.”  He paused a moment and started to pace, like what he was about to say was deeply troubling.  “I know you want to know what happened, who killed Director Fury and why.  We don’t know yet.  Whatever treachery is going on here, it runs deep.  I’m disturbed and disgusted by it.  Two days ago, Jasper Sitwell was also found murdered.”  A quiet murmur of alarm rolled over the group.  Clint darted a glance at Natasha to see her reaction and found she was glancing at him as well, a question poised on her lips.  “And we lost all contact with Deputy Director Hill shortly after Director Fury’s assassination.  I’m going to be honest with you.  At this point, I don’t know what to think.  I do know that, whatever is happening, Captain Rogers is involved.”

That assertion came without warning and seemingly at random.  The roll of whispers and hushed conversation after Pierce’s announcement was significantly louder.  Clint felt Natasha stiffen beside him.  Pierce raised his hands in appeasement and nodded to one of the techs.  “We received this recording this morning.  It’s from a security camera at one of the ports in Algiers two nights ago.”  A grainy black and white image appeared on the central monitor.  It was obviously a video of some sort of shipping yard.  It was exceedingly difficult to make out what was happening, but two figures were talking.  One was hunched over like he was hurt; it was Sitwell, if the complete lack of hair was any indication.  Rogers was recognizable enough with this uniform, the silver star prominently featured across his chest and the “A” upon his helmet goddamn beacons that blared “Captain America”.  The conversation between the two men couldn’t be heard, but it was growing more heated.  Then Sitwell threw himself at Rogers.  There was a flash, a gun going off though if either of them was shot it wasn’t obvious, and a brief struggle.  Then Rogers had Sitwell on his knees and was looming over him, _threatening_.  It was like watching some grotesque movie, but it flashed off before the ending.  “This is the last image we have of Agent Sitwell alive.”

The silence in the room was unimaginable.  Nobody spoke.  Nobody moved.  Nobody _breathed._   “Sir,” a voice called out from one of the computer consoles.  It was a young woman, a junior agent, who was white-faced and horrified like the very foundation of everything she held immutable and true in this world of lies and espionage was cracking and crumbling.  It was.  What they’d been shown didn’t make sense.  Captain America was the best good guy there ever was, a _hero_ in the strictest sense who’d sacrificed himself not once but twice for the sake of their world.  “You can’t be suggesting that Captain Rogers would…”  She couldn’t even finish.

Pierce looked at her apologetically.  It was harshly clear he did mean to suggest it, even if he wasn’t brave enough to outright say it.  “Like I said, at this point, I don’t know what to think.  Once Sitwell’s body is transported back to the States, we may find more answers.  Until that time, I have to assume that this altercation led to his death and Captain Rogers’ disappearance.  Agent Romanoff, you were the last person to see Rogers before he left.  Did he tell you anything?”

Every pair of eyes in the room turned to Natasha.  How could Pierce know Natasha was the last person to see Steve?  It made sense, but he said it with such certainty.  Natasha was far too professional and too talented at lying and acting to let her dismay show.  Clint only knew of it because he was close enough to feel the muscles of her lithe body tense.  She was quick to manufacture an answer.  “Just that he was leaving on an assignment for Director Fury,” she evenly replied.  She emphasized that last part, speaking slowly and very clearly.  Clint knew why.  She was trying to link Rogers’ name with Fury’s, to show he was _trusted_ by Fury, that Steve was working for their fallen leader.

Pierce wasn’t satisfied.  “Nothing else?”

“No, sir.  Director Fury ordered him to keep the details secret.”

Pierce sighed, even unhappier.  He looked back at the agents assembled.  “What I’m about to say may be difficult to accept, but for his own protection and ours, we need to bring Captain Rogers into custody.”  This time Natasha wasn’t so careful about her reaction, dropping her gaze and folding her arms across her chest as though to keep herself from shaking.  “I don’t believe in coincidences, not when two high-level SHIELD officers are killed within forty-eight hours of each other.  Captain Rogers is the only connection we have between the murders right now.  At the very least he has information concerning the death of Agent Sitwell, but he may also know something about who killed Director Fury.  We need to know what he knows.”

The video was frozen on its last image, where Rogers was standing over Sitwell’s terrified form.  Steve’s SHIELD photo was displayed on the left, along with information concerning his last known whereabouts.  He’d reported in SHIELD Headquarters in New York around noon four days ago.  After that, the trail went cold.  Two days ago he’d had this run in with Sitwell, if the time and date stamp on the video was accurate.  If he’d gone on the run after that, he had enough of a head start on them to be anywhere in the world.  Rogers wasn’t a spy, but he was smart and he was fast.  If he’d killed Sitwell, whatever the reason, he wouldn’t be stupid enough to come back to DC.

Pierce went on.  “This is your only mission.  Whatever op you might have been running, bury it.  This is priority one.  Captain Rogers must be brought in as soon as possible.  If someone is attacking SHIELD, I want to know who and why.  I want our people, our resources, and our ideals protected.  I want this all over the world.  _Everyone_ works this.  Understood?”  The shock in the room was palpable, so much so that no one responded.  “Wherever Rogers is, whoever he’s working with, we need to find him.  I want him apprehended unharmed.  No mistakes.  No matter how bad this looks, we don’t have all the facts.  I’m going to say it again: bring him in _unharmed_.  Understood?”  This second time, people nodded stiffly, like they couldn’t quite believe what they were agreeing to do.  This was Captain America, not some terrorist or madman or threat.  This was _Captain America_.

But even as Clint thought that, Fury’s last words to him echoed through his head.  _Don’t trust anyone._   Why the hell hadn’t Fury reinstated Rogers after he’d recovered from his injuries?  Rogers certainly had a hell of a reason to hold a grudge, SHIELD’s treatment of Natasha notwithstanding.  And SHIELD had no shortage of enemies.   Was it possible Steve’s bitterness and resentment had driven him to the other side?  _It’s not possible.  He’s Captain America.  Captain Goddamn America._ But it certainly looked like Rogers was about ready to destroy Sitwell from that video.  Clint couldn’t believe he was _actually_ thinking this.  He didn’t trust Pierce, that was for damn sure, but it wasn’t like Fury had been honest with him.  It wasn’t like Fury had _ever_ been honest with him.  And now it seemed like Fury’s affinity for compartmentalization had gotten him killed.  And if Rogers was innocent ( _God, when the hell did this turn into if?_ ), compartmentalization had just gotten him labeled as a fugitive.

“I swear to all of you: if there is a traitor in SHIELD that got Nick Fury and Agent Sitwell killed, I am going to find him, no matter who he is.  And I am going to make him very, _very_ sorry.”  Pierce’s words hung over the group like a pall.  He was still, _letting_ it all sink in, and then he walked to the security doors on the left and headed back out into the corridor beyond.

When Pierce was gone, the room fell apart anew in whispers.  Rumlow was stepping up.  Rumlow.  Clint’s gut clenched.  _What the hell is this?_ “Eyes here.  We’ve got people combing the shipping yards in Algiers for clues as to what might have happened.  They’re going to give us answers.  In the meantime, we lock down DC.  Runways are monitored at BWI, IAD, and Reagan.  I want eyes and ears on everything.  Scan all open sources, phones, laptops, PDAs, _whatever_ , and route it through here.  If Rogers tries to get back in–” And now Rumlow’s sharp eyes went right to Natasha.  The other agents might not have noticed it, but she certainly did.  And Clint did.  “–we catch him before he even thinks about running.  Send word out to New York and LA to do the same.  Pull deep undercovers and get them on Rogers’ trail.  I want hourly reports from every SHIELD station around the globe.  I want Rogers tracked down.  We make a clean arrest.  Clear?”  There was a series of nods and affirmations.  “Get it done.  Now.”

That was enough to break the stasis within the room.  Agents jumped into motion, quickly coordinating with each other to get this manhunt underway.  Techs scrambled at their keyboards.  Clint watched the barely ordered chaos for a moment before he felt Natasha step away from him.  He turned and reached for her arm.  “Where are you going?”

“To find Steve,” she responded softly but firmly.

“Are you crazy?” he hissed.  Her eyes flashed in anger, but he wasn’t going to be dissuaded.  “Whatever’s going on, you have to stay here.  You know better.  Even if he had nothing to do with this–”

“Even if?”  Natasha analyzed his face for a long moment, staring at his eyes, reading him.  And then the anger and _disgust_ in her glare cut right through him like a knife to his heart.  “You think he killed Sitwell?  What the hell was Sitwell doing out there?”

“Don’t,” he warned.  “Don’t.  You don’t know anything more than I do.”

“I know Steve.  This is a setup,” she hissed.  “He’s in trouble.”  That much was damn obvious.  They were all in trouble.   Clint didn’t know what else to think.  Her anger, raw and aggravated by her grief over losing Fury, boiled to the surface, and the icy stare she gave him was brutal and damning.  She was staring at him like she didn’t know him.  Maybe she didn’t.  And he didn’t know her.  Not anymore.  “If you think he would ever murder someone like that, then you’ve really lost your way.”

“I don’t,” Clint responded, unable to keep the spite from his voice.  “I don’t.  But we can’t fly off the handle half-cocked!  Fury told me not to trust anyone.  _Anyone._ ”

“Including me?” she hissed.  Every connection he’d had with her was ripping into tattered ends and broken threads.  She yanked her arm away and stalked up the stairs to the rear of the room.  She was through the doors there, never once looking back at him. Clint couldn’t do a damn thing but watch and wonder what the hell they were supposed to do now.  This was coming up from inside SHIELD, whatever it was, and Natasha bolting off to find her lover in blaze of grief and guns was certifiably _stupid_.  If Rogers was innocent, if he’d had nothing to do with Sitwell’s murder or Fury’s assassination, then he still had _something_ Pierce wanted.  And she was a fool to think they wouldn’t use her to get it from him.

Clint wanted to run after her, to knock some goddamn sense into her head, but he didn’t.  She’d hurt him with her accusation.  She’d hurt him, and she was walking away.  Walking from SHIELD, from the life they’d led together as partners and friends.  The cracks that had been forming in SHIELD were becoming as wide as fissures and faults now, and she was choosing a side and she didn’t care if he came with her.  No matter what he did or thought, she was throwing her lot in with Rogers.  She was throwing SHIELD away, she was throwing _him_ away _,_ to be with Rogers.

Goddamn but that hurt.

“Barton.”  He turned at the call to find Rumlow standing behind him.  The STRIKE commander was eyeing him in concern.  It was the most amiable he’d seen the man be.  “Pierce wants to see you.”  That request took Clint aback for a second, his brain fumbling to understand.  Rumlow misread his momentary floundering for grief.  His hard expression softened.  “Sorry about what happened with Fury today.  Fucking messed up, what happened to him.  I know you did everything you could.”  Clint said nothing.  Rumlow tipped his head a little like he wanted to say more.  He did say more.  “And sorry about what I said to you a couple months back.”  He seemed ashamed, well and truly, for the heated and cruel argument they’d had when the STRIKE Team had been sent to arrest Natasha and Clint had stood in her defense.  “That whole situation just got to me, but I shouldn’t have taken it out on you.  Sorry.”

Clint finally recovered enough of his faculties to nod.  “What does Pierce want?”

Rumlow nudged his shoulder gently to get him walking, and they were striding across operations control toward the security doors.  “You’re the last one to see Fury alive and the only one who saw the shooter.  And you’re the best sniper we have.”  Clint’s phone buzzed once in his pocket.  He prayed Rumlow didn’t notice, and it seemed like he hadn’t.  Rumlow just held open the door for him and waited for him to walk through it.  When he did, Rumlow sighed slowly, wearily, and led him down the corridor deeper into the Triskelion.  “Pierce needs your help.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _On moi._ – He's mine.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Thanks so much for all the comments and support! And special thanks to LenaAzarova for help with the Russian translations! Enjoy this chapter!

Escaping the Triskelion wasn’t easy.  It was one of the most secure buildings in the world, and in the wake of Fury’s death, its already admirable defenses were heightened.  Still, Natasha wasn’t daunted.  She was exceedingly proficient at eluding capture, a skill that aided her in countless missions for the KGB and Brushov and countless more for SHIELD.  She made herself be patient.  As much as her argument with Clint had upset her, she knew he was right.  Pierce would be foolish not to follow her in the hopes that she would somehow lead them to Steve.  That could happen if she wasn’t smart and capable (which she was) and if she actually knew where Steve was (which she didn’t).  Thinking about that only unnerved her, so she ignored it.  She ignored how worried she was, how upset she was with Clint, how _lost_ she was without Fury.  How afraid she was that Steve was hurt or dead.  How disturbed she was that SHIELD was rapidly turning into something else, something she didn’t recognize, in front of her very eyes.  She ignored it all of that and focused on getting away.

After the meeting, the vast majority of SHIELD was predictably and frantically going about their manhunt.  There was an air of tension, fear, and mourning, and that was a convenient distraction if there ever was one.  Still, she wandered for a bit, acting as though she had tasks, objectives, in the event anyone was watching her or following her.  It wasn’t entirely wasted time.  Her mind was racing, both with what happened and with a plan to escape, and she was listening.  Everywhere people were whispering about Fury, about Sitwell, about Clint and Steve and her.  As rattled as she was by it all, she kept an ear on it as she walked the corridors of the Triskelion.  She was searching for clues, for some answers to the mess of swirling questions around her.  No one had any.  It was all rumor and conjecture, and she knew she shouldn’t put faith in any of it without some confirmation.  Frustrated, she put more direction into getting the hell out of there while she still could.

There was a kid in R&D, a guy who apparently had the hots for her (at least if gossip was to be believed, and it probably was).  He’d worked a mission with her right after the Battle of New York (well, he was in the background, at any rate), and ever since then he’d been infatuated.  She’d been keeping this in her back pocket for months, waiting for the opportune moment.  There’d never be a better one.  Natasha went to the massive levels that comprised the heart of SHIELD’s development sector where the marvelous gadgets and technological wonders that made high-level espionage possible were designed, built, and tested.  Once she spotted the young tech, she honed in like a bird of prey and worked it like there was no tomorrow, laying it on thick with a coy smile and a sweet laugh and the right sway of her hips.  The kid was wide-eyed and drooling and ready to eat out of her palm, though he seemed bashfully worried about flirting with Captain America’s girl, as he put it, though not worried enough to not do it.  He was also (moderately) concerned about defying the SHIELD-wide orders to secure the Triskelion.  Natasha had only giggled and grinned dismissively and leaned in front of his computer terminal in a way that she knew put her cleavage on display.  She’d sweet-talked her way into the equipment room in no time at all.  After that, it was a simple matter of turning into someone else.  Literally.  She’d used the photostatic mask before on a few missions; it was an incredibly lightweight holographic mesh that perfectly conformed to one’s face and projected a highly detailed image of another’s likeness.  It had its limits; in particular, it worked the best if the fake face was similar in size and proportions to the real face, and it didn’t alter the voice (though they had voice modulators for that purpose).  A true, undetectable disguise required perfecting by a specialist tweaking the holographic interface, but she only needed enough to get through the door.  It also couldn’t defeat a retinal scanner, but that was handled with a kiss on the guy’s cheek and a hand rubbing his shoulder.  The tech hacked into the Triskelion’s computer systems and had them turn a blind eye when she passed through the lobby and down into the garage.

Now she was speeding down the highway, her eyes on the rearview mirror about as much as they were ahead of her on the street.  She was fairly certain she wasn’t being followed, but she was frazzled enough to concede that she might be.  SHIELD agents were the best in the world, and if Pierce or Rumlow had put a tail on her, it would be difficult to shake.  She felt lonely and exposed and wondered again if Clint wasn’t right, if it wouldn’t be a better thing to stay put and lay low.  But she realized instantly that wasn’t an option, not when Steve might need her.  Staying there and waiting uselessly was not what Steve would’ve done had their roles been reversed.  She considered circling the city for a while just to throw them off her scent if they were back there, but she decided against it.  It was already getting close to sunset, and she wanted the cover of darkness to get out of DC. 

For a moment she questioned her sanity in heading back to Steve’s apartment.  If SHIELD was going to look anywhere for him, it would certainly be there.  However, she needed supplies.  Clothes and guns.  She didn’t have a place of her own, as tied to SHIELD as she was, so this was the only choice.  And it wasn’t just that.  Maybe it was crazy, but she prayed he’d be there.  He’d be foolish – fundamentally goddamn _stupid_ – to be there, but maybe…  She hadn’t been back to his place since he’d left.  The silence without his voice, his things all around her, the smell of him on his clothes and blanket…  It had been too much.  Worry and fear, at least fear like this, for another person were novel things to her, raw and unfamiliar, and she feared they could overpower her if she let them.  She had been missing him in a way she’d never missed anyone before.  And when the ghost of presence haunted her, she had fled to the barracks at the Triskelion.

He wasn’t going to be there.  He _wouldn’t_ be there.  But she couldn’t help the pull of hope, and anxiety filled her stomach with flutters as she pulled her Corvette behind his building.  She killed the motor and sat there for a few torturous minutes, watching and listening.  The sun was low, sinking toward the horizon, washing the world with the timid beginnings of evening.  Her careful eyes devoured the street, analyzing every pedestrian and car for potential threats.  It was quiet.  Peaceful.  Normal.  There was no sign of anything.  Emboldened by that, she slipped out of her car and quickly walked into the brownstone.  _Get in.  Get out.  Hurry._

She was a shadow, fleet and purposeful, as she silently but quickly climbed the steps.  She fished in the pocket of her leather jacket for her key and slid it into the lock of Steve’s door.  But she heard something then that made her heart stop.  Music.  It was soft, barely audible at all, but as she stood there, her ear tilted toward the door, she recognized it.  Steve’s record player was on, and Kitty Kallen was crooning “It’s Been a Long, Long Time” again.  Natasha’s heart pounded as she leaned back, and she swept disturbed eyes behind her.  There was nobody.  Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling she was being watched, paranoia twisting deep in her gut.  Briefly she considered abandoning this and getting out of there, but as she listened to the faint melody, she realized it was a sign.  A sign meant for her.  Still, she reached into her waistband behind her jacket and pulled her gun.  Holding it at the ready, she twisted the knob of the door.  She opened it only wide enough to slip inside before closing it silently behind her.   The apartment looked just as she’d left it four days ago.  In the long afternoon shadows, everything was dark, still, and lonely.  He wasn’t there.  No one was there.  The song finished with a swell of horns, and it was eerily silent for a moment.  Then it repeated.

Natasha narrowed her eyes and held her gun in front of her as she crept further inside.  Her shoes were silent on the hardwood floors as she slunk down the hallway, keeping to the shadows as much as possible with her back against the wall.  She checked inside the den and found nothing.  The kitchen was empty.  The spare bedroom and bathroom were as well.  And his bedroom was as she’d left it.  She’d dressed his bed for him before leaving, and she glanced at it with sudden longing and fear shooting through her heart before she checked around the room’s closets and inside the master bath.  Nothing.  She didn’t know whether or not to be disappointed or relieved.  That worry for him grew sharp again, and disappointment won out.

Natasha lowered her gun and walked back to the living area.  She stepped to his stereo and shut it down with a press of a button.  _Somebody_ must have been here to turn it on.  It could have been days ago, but somehow she knew it hadn’t been.  And she somehow knew it was Steve.  He’d been back.  Why else would the song to which they’d danced be playing softly for her?  He had been there.  Recently.

Excitement and relief rushed over her in a warm wave that almost stole her strength.  Perhaps it was unwise and premature to think herself safe, but she did, putting her gun back into the holster on her lower back under her jacket.  Her mind was racing as she looked around again.  If he’d come back and put that song on for her, there was something here he’d left for her.  There had to be.  _There had to be._   Frantically she searched, her breath quick and her heart pounding as she gave everything a cursory glance.  There was no other sign that he’d come back.  She returned to his room and checked his dresser and closet, figuring he might have come for clothes, but everything was neatly folded and hung and she didn’t know his wardrobe well enough to determine if anything was missing.  She did the same in the kitchen, searching for signs that he’d eaten or taken food, but there weren’t any.  Growing frustrated, she went back to the living room.

And then her eyes caught the stack of papers on the coffee table.  They’d been there before she’d left earlier that week, but they hadn’t been open like this.  They were the SSR files he’d been reading on Bucky Barnes and the Howling Commandos, and they were spread around just so, as though to make it appear like someone had been working with them.  Natasha came closer, leafing through them suspiciously.  Then her eyes caught a pamphlet that had been left on the top of the pile.  It was for the new Smithsonian exhibit on Captain America, the one about which the curator had called Steve days ago.  She picked it up, reading the glossy words.  _Captain America: The Living Legend and Symbol of Courage.  July 5 th – September 30th at the National Air and Space Museum.  _And suddenly, like a grand epiphany, she knew where he was.

She moved fast.  She raced back to his bedroom, finding a duffel bag on the floor of the closet that she stuffed with a change of clothes for him and for her.  In the back of the closet she’d stashed a few small handguns, which she grabbed.  One she strapped to her ankle under her pants.  The others she placed in the bag.  She shouldered the duffel and covered her tracks as best she could to make it seem as though someone hadn’t hastily packed and fled.  Then she was back out the door.

“Hi.”

Natasha’s heart leapt into her throat as she closed Steve’s apartment.  She was quick to regain herself, turning after locking the door.  “Hi,” she responded.

Steve’s neighbor (Kate, she thought) was standing there with a basket of laundry.  She was dressed in a warm-up suit, her honeyed hair pulled into a messy pony tail.  “Natasha, right?” she said.  “I don’t think we’ve ever formally met.  I’m Kate.”  She held out her hand and offered Natasha a warm smile.

Natasha swallowed down her frustration.  There was no time for this.  Still, she stuffed her key back in her jacket pocket and put on a friendly, soft smile as she shook the other girl’s hand.  “Nice to finally meet you,” she said.

“Likewise,” Kate replied.  She eyed the duffel bag on Natasha’s shoulder a bit warily.  “This is really awkward and probably not any of my business, but you’re not leaving, are you?  That kinda looks like a moving-out bag, and I haven’t seen Steve recently.”

“Oh, this?  Oh, no.  No, I’m not leaving.”

Kate smiled fondly.  “That’s good.  Steve’s a really nice guy, and he was pretty lonely before you started dating him.  I just don’t want to see him get his heart broken.  He deserves to have someone in his life who’s good to him.  He needs it.”

Natasha didn’t quite know what to make of this.  Of all the times to bump into this girl, why now?  And the whole conversation seemed a bit contrived.  Still, as good as she was at reading other people, she couldn’t see anything other than sincerity in Kate’s eyes.  She really seemed like a friendly person concerned for her neighbor.  But, then again, if she was so concerned about Steve being unhappy, why hadn’t she started dating him?  Steve had been living here for months, and as far as Natasha knew, Kate had been, as well.  She’d had plenty of opportunity.  Still, _then again_ , what did she know?  Maybe this girl had tried asking Steve out and he’d turned her down.  Or maybe she was too shy.  Or maybe–

This _really_ wasn’t the time to be jealous over nothing.  Sometimes her emotions got the better of her now where they never used to.  It was weakness, and it was because of love.  She damn well knew it, so she buried it and smiled her best, sweet smile.  “He’s fine.”

“Has he been doing okay at work?  I mean, I just assume you work with him.”  Kate gave her a disarming smile.  “Getting hurt like that…  It’s a big deal, you know?  I worry about him.”

“You don’t need to.  He’s fine,” Natasha said again, careful to keep the heat and annoyance from her tone.  “He’s already out on assignment.”

Kate still seemed like she picked up on Natasha’s curtness.  She smiled feebly.  “Is he going to be home soon?”

Natasha softened her face and voice even further.  Being confrontational would get her no closer to escaping this.  “I hope so,” she said.  Then, for good measure, she added, “I miss him.”

Kate smiled at that.  They were silent for a moment, trapped in the awkwardness, until the other girl’s grin turned uncomfortable and a tad forced.  “Well, I need to get downstairs before someone takes my clothes out of the dryer.  Have a good evening.”

“You, too.”  Kate was gone down the steps with her laundry.  Natasha forced herself to be still even though every inch of her body was crawling with the need to go, waiting until Kate was out of sight and she could no longer hear her footsteps in the stairwell.  Then she was quickly on her way herself, praying with every second that she wasn’t wrong about where Steve was hiding.

* * *

It was strange (okay, damn near uncomfortable) to be walking around the Captain America exhibit.  Natasha hadn’t known what to expect, but the sheer size and breadth of it was striking and a little overwhelming.  It was newly opened, just in its first week of being available to the public, and it was Friday afternoon so it was crowded with kids and adults alike.  As she descended the escalator in the National Air and Space Museum, she was greeted by a humongous banner of Steve in all of his glory as Captain America.  Seeing it took her aback for a second.  Sometimes it was difficult to remember that he’d had this whole other life before meeting her, that he was a war hero who’d led a nation to victory against the Nazis and defeated HYDRA and the Red Skull.  It was hard to remember that this was behind the man she loved, all of this legacy and symbolism _._   And it was even harder still to picture him as a sick, scrawny kid from Depression-era Brooklyn who’d never wanted anything more than to do what was right.  Seeing the pictures of him before the serum was shocking when she’d only ever known him as a tall, perfectly sculpted mass of strength, muscle, and confidence.  She wasn’t there to look around, at least not at the exhibits, but she couldn’t help but stare a moment at a display of him transforming from an asthmatic stick of a boy into the towering warrior for peace and justice.  It was remarkable.  And her eyes lingered on those pictures of him from before the serum.  His eyes were the same then as they were now, and that made her feel warmer and surer of herself.

But she didn’t spend more than that moment.  Forcing her heart to slow in its frantic flutter against her ribs, she walked around, pretending to be paying close attention to the exhibits, the memorabilia that someone had confiscated from Steve’s apartment in Brooklyn, the war artefacts, guns and memos and uniforms and Steve’s old motorcycle.  Really she was paying attention to _everything_ else, to everyone around her, searching for any sign of Steve’s familiar, large frame in the crowd.  He wouldn’t come here dressed in his uniform of course, but she figured he’d still be fairly easy to spot given his build and complete inability to be inconspicuous, especially to her.  She watched as much for SHIELD agents blending in with the crowds; they, too, should be entirely obvious to her trained eye.  If they were there, they were more talented with subterfuge than the usual lot.  Natasha wandered a bit longer, passing a huge set-up featuring mannequins wearing Steve’s old uniform and shield and the get-ups of the Howling Commandos.  There was a large crowd in front of this display, tourists taking pictures, boys on their dads’ shoulders and pointing in awe.  Natasha scanned through the group with quick eyes, fighting to stay calm and patient.  Her composure, already so shredded by the day’s horrors, was failing her, and she released a long, shaky sigh that was too noticeable and turned away.  Behind there was a section devoted to James Barnes.  A large, glass display featured the clearest, most detailed picture of him she’d ever seen.  She read the text alongside it, his biography, his friendship with Steve and his life that was too early ended.  And then her eyes returned to his.  There was something familiar about them that she couldn’t place, and as she took the moment to look at him, really look, an unsettling feeling of _recognition_ assailed her.  She’d seen pictures of Barnes before, of course, but most had been of him smiling, bright and brotherly.  There was something about _this_ one with that squinted expression and hard look of determination that made her believe she _knew_ this man.

That wasn’t possible.  And it was too much, this feeling that was born of the fear and paranoia gnawing at her composure, so she turned away and resumed scanning the crowd.  Her feet carried her back closer to the display of the Commandos with the huge painting behind it of each of the men.  She looked.  She listened.  She waited and hoped.  Steve had to be here.  She hadn’t imagined the clue he’d left, had she?  And this made good sense.  Arresting him here, surrounded by so many people and in the goddamn Captain America exhibit of all places…  Nobody in SHIELD was that bold.  The public relations fall-out would be widespread to say the least.  So he _had_ to be here.  _Please, let him be here…_

And then he was.  He was right beside her, and she’d never felt him coming until his familiar hand grasped hers and his strong, warm fingers wove through her own.  She nearly jumped, but she held down the reaction at the last second, rolling her eyes at herself a little in disgust over her own weakness as she sagged ever so slightly against him in consuming relief.  She couldn’t be obvious about it.  Not here.  He’d certainly learned a thing or two from her over the last few months about being sneaky.  Still, he seemed equally stricken by relief for a second.  “Thank God,” he murmured.  “Thank God you’re here.”  She chanced looking at him.  He was a little pale, and there were hints of fading bruises and cuts littering his face.  A few streaks of dirt lined his neck and crawled up into his ear, like he’d washed quickly and hadn’t had the time (or energy) to get everything clean.  He was unshaven, and his hair was unkempt under a dark blue baseball cap.  He was dressed in a black hooded sweatshirt with a gray t-shirt underneath it.  The jeans he wore were a little too big in the waist, and his brown construction boots were splattered with dried mud.

But Steve looked okay.  _Steve was okay._ And he was there with her.  She almost cried.  “Let’s get out of here,” he said.  He didn’t wait for her response or let go of her, pulling her alongside him as they walked purposefully but not too quickly through the exhibit.  Touching only his hand was painful; she wanted more, wanted so desperately to kiss him and hold him and _make sure_ he was okay.  She wanted the comfort of his embrace so badly she could hardly think of anything else.  They wove their way through the crowd, Natasha maintaining presence of mind enough to keep a sharp eye on their surroundings, until they were away from the heavy throng of people at the exhibit.

Then she couldn’t restrain herself anymore.  She pulled him to a quiet corner alongside the escalators and palmed the sides of his face.  “Are you hurt?” she whispered.  She didn’t wait for him to answer, pulling his face to hers to kiss him frantically. 

Steve held her tight; she could tell he was shaken, worried.  Frightened.  His lips brushed over her cheek.  “No, I’m alright,” he breathed against her.  For a long minute, clinging to each other was all they could manage.  It was all she wanted.  She wanted to stay there, safe in his embrace, feeling him breathe and listening to his heart, because everything around them and ahead of them was difficult, dark, and dangerous.

But the minute didn’t last.  “Nat,” Steve said, pulling away to look into her eyes.  He was teeming with stress.  “Nat, I have to get to Fury.  I don’t know what’s happening, but what he sent me to do…  Sitwell was there and he’s–”

“Fury’s dead.”  The words slipped from her mouth, soft and seemingly innocuous.  She closed her eyes against the sting of tears and lowered her face, nuzzling into his chest.  The wetness seeped down her cheek and into his shirt.  “He’s dead.”

Steve stiffened in her arms, pulling back to stare down at her again.  His eyes were wide with alarm.  She could practically feel the thundering of his pulse under her fingers.  She could practically feel the strength seep from his body.  “What?” he whispered.  “When?”

“A few hours ago.  If you didn’t know that, how did you know SHIELD is looking for you?”

Steve swallowed thickly.  “I didn’t.  I just guessed.  Somebody inside SHIELD sent Sitwell to–”  A laughing couple brushed by them, too close for comfort, and Steve immediately hushed his words.  He looked around quickly, glancing over her shoulder.  “We shouldn’t talk here.  We have to go.”

They walked away, side by side, doing their best not to look like they were upset or harried.  Once they exited the escalators that took them back to the higher level, they picked up their pace slightly.  The museum wasn’t as crowded up here.  “Are you okay?” he asked quietly, slinging his arm around her shoulder to pull her closer.

She smiled, putting on the act.  Faking it was always something she could do.  “Not really,” she admitted, belying the façade.  “Everything’s falling apart.  Pierce thinks you murdered Sitwell.”

_“What?”_

“And that you know something about who killed Fury.”  Steve was rigid beside her.  She could feel the tension holding his form painfully taut.  Her words riled him enough for him to look over his shoulder nervously to see if his reactions had been noticed.  “Don’t.  I think we’re alright, but this is SHIELD.  We’re going to have to move fast to get out from under them.”

Steve seemed lost and angry for a moment.  His eyes were dark and troubled.  “I didn’t kill Sitwell,” he muttered irately.  His voice was low but firm.  “I didn’t.  You don’t think–”

“Of course not,” she hissed, a little hurt that he could even consider it.  “What happened?”

Steve shook his head.  They were out the main doors and into the late afternoon sunlight.  She got a better look at him now and saw that he was exhausted and limping slightly.  That and the disquiet shining in his eyes only heightened her worry.  They turned and headed down the street to the parking garage.  “When we were in Crimea, Rumlow left the safe house to deliver something to Algerian pirates.  Whatever it was, Fury was hunting it down; that’s why he kept sending you out.”  They crossed the street rapidly.  Steve was walking faster and faster, like he hadn’t been aware of how bad the situation had become.  He probably hadn’t been.  “He wanted me to take down the pirates and steal whatever data I found.  Sitwell was there.  I think he was trying to pay the pirates, get the data back.  I don’t know who sent him.  He claimed Fury did.  If Fury did, he set me up.  And if he didn’t…  Either way I couldn’t trust SHIELD.”

“What data?”

Steve stuffed his hands in his pockets, looking over his shoulder again.  He was riled, incredibly so.  “I don’t know what it is.  Sitwell said it was an algorithm, but he wouldn’t say what it did.”

Natasha released a slow breath, grabbing Steve’s arm gently and slowing him as they reached the garage.  The deep echo of rumbling car engines and tires rolling on concrete seemed incredibly loud, thrumming against them as they wavered in the enormity of what was happening.  “Who killed Sitwell?”

“I don’t know,” he said quickly and quietly.  “A sniper.  He…”  Steve faltered.  For him to be this rattled about an opponent meant nothing good.  “Nat, this guy and I were evenly matched.  I barely got away from him.  He was fast.  Strong.  He had some sort of metal arm with the Russian star on it.   Another Soviet super soldier?”

Cold fear washed over Natasha.  “He shot Fury, too,” she whispered.  Before she could overcome her shock and say anything further, Steve was bounding up the steps in the cement stairwell of the garage, taking them two at a time.  The loud sound of people talking ahead killed their hushed conversation.  Steve lowered his eyes and slowed his climb as a large crowd of teenagers pushed by them, laughing loudly and talking about the restaurant to which they were heading and the clubs they would visit after.

Natasha caught up.  This wasn’t the floor on which she was parked.  The garage was nearly filled to capacity and she’d had to go higher.  “Stay here,” Steve said, and he was jogging out into the rows of idle cars.  She considered following him but instead did as he said, keeping a sharp eye out on the street below them through the window in the stairwell and on the garage around them.  She saw him stop at a blue pickup truck down the center row some distance.  He opened the passenger door and reached inside, pulling a large satchel from it that he slung over his shoulder.  He closed the truck and walked back with huge strides.  She realized belatedly that what he was carrying was his shield, safe and hidden inside the black nylon of the pack.  He was back in front of her with half a weak grin.  “Had to borrow someone’s truck in New Jersey.  Hopefully they’ll find it here.  Left a note.”

She couldn’t help herself.  It was damn _stupid_ what he’d done, and so _him_ , and the sight of him standing there with that little, weak smile curling his lips and his eyes so open to her was too much after so many days spent worried and burdened with grief and fear and want.  She kissed him deeply again, curling her hands into his sweatshirt and pulling him closer.  This was less relieved and more passionate, more desperate.  He smelled like he hadn’t had a shower in days, stale sweat and dirt and places far from here, but she didn’t care, drawing him deeper and spending just this one moment relishing in his nearness.  God, she was weak and pathetic and this sort of dependency was going to get them both in trouble, but she couldn’t help herself.

Steve’s hands were large and strong on her back, keeping her tight to him.  With a seemingly great effort, he pulled his mouth from hers.  Feverishly he kissed her forehead.  “It’ll be alright,” he soothed.  “We’ll figure this out.”

Natasha couldn’t let him go.  It was probably a good thing she didn’t, at least for that moment, as a car drove by and slowed beside them.  Steve’s back was to it so he didn’t see the prying eyes staring at them.  A window rolled down.  She wasted no time, throwing herself back at Steve and ravenously smothering his mouth with her own.  He grunted in surprise.  “You guys leaving?” the man inside the car asked.  “Where you parked?”  She didn’t answer, kissing Steve harder – practically making out with him in broad daylight in the middle of a busy parking garage – and sliding her hands around into the rear pockets of his jeans.  A disgusted huff came from the car.  “Get a goddamn room.”

The minute the car raced away, Natasha pulled away from Steve, snatching his hand and dragging him back to the stairwell.  “Nothing gets rid of people like PDA,” she murmured, as much to herself as to him like she was justifying it.  Steve said nothing, drawing a deep breath and cocking his head, maybe even a tad embarrassed.  They ran up another two flights.  Once they reached the top floor of the garage, they were out in the open with the setting sun bright on them.  They walked briskly, her leading him, down the rows of cars towards her car.  Maybe it had been paranoid, but she’d ditched her Corvette at the airport, instead renting a sedan at one of the car rental places.  SHIELD had her car on file, so there was no sense in taking the risk.  “What happened to the data?” she quietly asked as they reached her car.

“I have it,” he softly replied.  He drew his hand out of his pocket and produced a SHIELD USB drive.  He held it in his palm, close to his chest, protectively.

She looked at it and then at him.   She suddenly felt more exposed, more vulnerable.  “No wonder why Pierce wants you,” she surmised.  “He wants this.”

Steve shook his head.  He was grim, his mouth tight with a frown.  “How the hell could he know I have it?”  She didn’t have an answer.  “The only way he could is if he sent the sniper.”  That was a hell of an accusation, one for which there was little evidence.  But if it was true, that meant the corruption in SHIELD went all the way to the top.  And Pierce had ordered Fury killed.  Or it was Fury who’d been corrupt and, as Steve had said, this whole thing had been a set up and Pierce was trying to salvage a bad situation.  Fury had dispatched Steve, the world’s best soldier and SHIELD’s strongest weapon, to steal something he had no business taking.  Rumlow and Sitwell striking deals with pirates was suspect but not necessarily damning; SHIELD often bartered with criminals when it was necessary to defeat a greater evil.  And this wouldn’t be the first time Fury had manipulated them, _used_ them, to his own ends.  _No,_ she thought as confidently as she could.  _Fury would never do that.  He couldn’t be a traitor._

At the moment, it didn’t matter.  Whatever was happening, whoever was betraying them, they were in serious trouble.  Steve had obviously come to the same troubling conclusion.  “We need to figure out what’s on this,” he declared as he closed his fingers around the drive and returned it to the pocket of his jeans.

Natasha unlocked her car and went over to the driver’s side.  “SHIELD drives like that are equipped with homing programs, level 6 or higher.  The minute we boot up, they’ll know where we are.”

Steve didn’t look happy.  “Then we have to take it some place–”

“Steve?”

Steve whirled.  “Kate?”  Sure enough, Kate stood behind them, dressed in jeans and a purple t-shirt.  She had a messenger bag with her.  Natasha’s eyes immediately narrowed in anger and suspicion.  Steve wasn’t nearly so doubtful, but he was surprised as all hell.  “What are you doing here?”

Kate was flustered, stammering uselessly for a second as she looked between Steve and Natasha.  “I, uh, I just – I was worried, okay?  I followed you,” she admitted, darting her eyes warily at Natasha.  Natasha was furious and embarrassed at once.  How the hell could she have been followed by a civilian?  Kate shook her head, blushing, as she returned her sheepish gaze to Steve.  “You just got hurt so badly, and I didn’t want to see that happen again.  Whatever’s happening to you, I can help.  I’m a nurse.”  She said that so stupidly, like the both of them weren’t well aware.  Natasha’s suspicions redoubled, and she opened her mouth to tell her off.

But Steve was already speaking.  He walked back to the trunk of the car and took both of her shoulders in his hands.  “You don’t want to be involved with this.  Trust me.  Go home.  Go right now.”

She was white with concern and fear and just a bit of excitement.  Is that what this was to her?  A chance to do something wild and adventurous?  _What the hell?_   However, before she could even begin to question, a silver glint in the building to their left drew Natasha’s attention.  “Get down!”

Her warning came just in time.  Steve yanked Kate down to the ground with him a mere instant before the rear window of Natasha’s car exploded.  The young woman screamed. Natasha fell to the cement, scrambling to the rear of the car and finding her gun.  She glanced at the building from where the shot had come, but there was no sign of the sniper.  It didn’t matter.  She didn’t need to see him to know he was there.

A van suddenly screeched around the center rows of cars, roaring toward them in reverse.  It stopped down the row, the rear doors flying open, and men in black combat gear charged out bearing automatic rifles.  _Shit._   “Get in the car!” Steve shouted to her.  Natasha didn’t hesitate, didn’t question, scrambling back to the driver’s door.  She turned, her wide eyes darting to Steve as he pulled his shield out of his pack and in front of him in one smooth motion and pushed Kate behind him.  There was another loud, booming crack, and Steve was nearly knocked from his feet as a round from a high-powered sniper rifle collided with his shield.  The bullet smashed on impact, driving Steve into the trunk of the car, but he got his balance.  “Go!”

Kate was terrified, shaking wildly as she kept herself low while trying to get into the backseat of Natasha’s car.  Natasha jabbed the keys into the ignition and turned the car on, throwing it in reverse.  “Down!” she yelled at Kate.  “Steve!”

Bullets peppered the car, but Steve was there, trying to absorb most of the shots with his shield.  The loud _clang clang_ of the bullets striking metal was deafening.  There was that glint of silver again, and the assassin jumped down from an adjacent building.  He landed on the top of a Hummer, crushing down the roof, before leaping to the garage.  He stalked closer, handing the sniper rifle to one of the men and taking an RPG launcher.  _“Rogers!”_ Natasha cried in terror.

Kate bravely lurched forward from the backseat and pushed the passenger door open wider.  Steve pivoted, moving from the rear of the car as Natasha gunned it and slipping into the passenger seat.  “Go,” he ordered.  Natasha didn’t need to be told.  She slammed her foot down on the accelerator and turned sharply, backing out of the spot.  Then she shifted into drive and floored it.  It was not a moment too soon as the car beside where they had been parked exploded, struck by a rocket.  Kate screamed, but Natasha wasted not a second in dismay, speeding down the aisle of the garage and heading toward the ramp down.  This wasn’t ideal for a high speed pursuit; there wasn’t much room to maneuver, and if their route became blocked, there would be no other way to escape.  But she had no choice.

Tires shrieked, echoing through the interior of the garage, as Natasha raced down the levels.  The racket of gunfire followed them, and she glanced in the rearview mirror to see the van chasing them.  Men were leaning out of the windows, the muzzles of their rifles winking, as they fired at them.  A bullet found its way through the car and smashed into the windshield, a web of cracks fanning out from the impact.  Another drove into Steve’s headrest, just barely missing him, and he jerked forward in terror.  Natasha’s eyes went wide, and she looked away from their path for a split second.  “Look out!” Steve cried, and Natasha slammed on the brakes and twisted the wheel sharply to avoid hitting a family coming back from the museum.  The car swerved uncontrollably, crashing into a parked SUV before she managed to get in under control.  Kate was flung forward by the impact with a cry, but Steve twisted around and reached a hand into the back seat and caught her.  “You okay?” he asked breathlessly.

There was no time for her response.  “Hang on!” Natasha cried, taking the next turn down to the bottom level too sharply.  The car howled as it tried to stay on the pavement, fishtailing for a horrifying moment before Natasha regained control.  Then she floored it, screaming towards the wonderful show of daylight ahead.  She gritted her teeth as the car struck a speed bump at the exit of the garage far fast, jolting them all again.  She didn’t slow at all, smashing through the wooden barrier at the booth and tearing out into the street.

“Where?” she gasped, turning to the left.

“Get on the freeway,” Steve answered.  He twisted in his seat to look behind him at Kate who was tucked between the front seat and floor.  “Are you okay?” he asked again.  Natasha heard her frightened gasping.  “Kate?  I need to know if you’re okay.”

“I’m okay,” came a timid answer.  “Who are these people?  What’s happening?”

“Just stay down and do everything we say,” Steve replied tightly.  He turned to Natasha.  “Is there anyone we can trust at SHIELD?  Hill?”

“I don’t know,” Natasha answered.  She glanced in the rearview mirror as she drove quickly down the street toward the Southwest Freeway.  “They’re gone.”  It was more than slightly disconcerting that the van with the gunmen had seemingly vanished.

“What?” Steve asked, turning around to look himself.  “We couldn’t have lost them.”

Natasha didn’t know what to say.  Thankfully the traffic lights cooperated and the police were nowhere to be found as they sped down the street.  A minute or two later there was still no sign of their pursuers.  She knew better than to think that they’d abandoned the chase.  She glanced at worriedly Steve as she drove up the onramp to the freeway.  “Which way?” she asked.

“We need to get out of DC,” he answered.  He was a tad breathless, but a quick glance over his body revealed he wasn’t hurt.  His shield was tucked between his knees, and his eyes were roving among her, what he could see of the rearview mirror, and the road ahead.  “Get some place safe and figure out what we’re dealing with.  New York, maybe.”

“Stark?”

“Where’s Barton?”

 _Clint._   “He’s still back at the Triskelion.  We have to get him out if–”

She couldn’t finish what she wanted to say.  The car was rammed from the rear.  Kate yelped, slamming into Natasha’s seat.  Steve’s arm shot across Natasha’s chest, bracing her so she didn’t hit her head on the steering wheel.  His other was pushing against the dashboard hard enough to dent it.  Something thudded against the top of her car, something large and heavy.  The driver’s window was suddenly smashed in by a metal fist.  Natasha yelped, glass spraying inside and cutting, as silver fingers reached for her.  Steve pulled the parking brake, and the car came to a sudden and screeching halt.  It lasted only a second before they were rammed again, but it was enough to fling the assassin off the roof and ahead of them onto the freeway.

Those metal fingers dug into the cement, slowing the sniper’s flight down the road.  Once he stopped, he straightened slowly.  And Natasha’s heart sunk into the pit of her stomach.  Icy fear raked over her, and she nearly shuddered.  Everything she’d been fearing since Clint had described Fury’s shooter rushed against her control, banging and bashing and nearly shattering it.  It was him.  _The Winter Soldier._

There was no time to think more, though.  The van was driving into the back of the car, lifting its rear off the road and pushing it forward even with the parking brake on and Natasha’s foot hard on the brakes.  They were helpless.  It was like being shoved slowly toward their doom, and the Winter Soldier was waiting menacingly.  He had a Kalashnikov aimed at them.

Steve moved faster than he pulled the trigger, though.  A blur of red, blue, and silver flashed in front of Natasha’s eyes, and his shield was up in front of them, blocking the spray of bullets.  “Step on it!” Steve cried over the clamor.  Natasha did, yanking the steering wheel to the right and switching to the gas.  Steve snapped down the parking brake, and the car twisted, spilling them all roughly to the left as they turned sharply.  That jostled them loose of the van.  Steve used the momentum of the spin to knock all of his weight into the car door, completely breaking it free.  The car hit the median, smashing and crumpling its front end.  Steve was out in a blink, reaching a hand inside and ripping the passenger seat out completely.  “Come on!”  He gestured to Kate, and she took his hand and scrambled free.  Natasha was out of the car as well, pulling her gun.  She emptied a clip at their assailant as he stalked closer, but most of the shots struck the metal arm.

The Winter Soldier raised his rifle.  “Nat, take her and go,” Steve said.  “Go now!”

To hell with that.  She wasn’t going to leave Steve to face this alone.  Steve was pushing Kate behind him, moving back toward the cement barriers that marked the median of the divided freeway.  Natasha levered herself over them to the other side of the road, where cars were rapidly drawing to a halt.  People were getting out and running chaotically.  “Natasha!” Steve cried.  He looked over his shoulder at her, his eyes wide in horror.  “Get out of here!”

An RPG was launched from the van.  Steve threw Kate away from him, shoving her over the median for protection as the rocket hit his shield.  He gave a hoarse cry when it exploded and catapulted him back across the road.  He hit the other side of the overpass before tumbling down to the street below.  Natasha’s heart leapt into her throat.  She heard screaming and cars crashing.  _No!_

“Oh, my God,” Kate whispered, crouching beside Natasha.  Natasha came back to herself, shoving down her panic and worry and ducking below the median.  Another RPG reduced her car to a ball of fire.  The blast of heat made her wince and shut her eyes tight for a second, the road shaking with the detonation.  She pressed close to Kate, shaking as they took cover behind the thick, protective concrete of the median and waited for the inferno behind them to dissipate.  The stench of burning oil and rubber was thick in the evening air, choking them, and Natasha shared a tense, warning look with the young woman beside her.  It was hard to wait.  It was hard not to _run_ , to get down there and make sure Steve was okay, but she made herself stay still because she had a chance to strike and she was going to take it.

A gun went off.  Again and again.  Bodies fell.  Natasha bit her tongue until she tasted blood.  Were they shooting civilians?  Her stomach twisted.  _“_ _Voz’mite yego zhivym.”_   That voice…  She remembered it so well.  A shiver raked its way up her back.  Ruthless.  Evil.  The Winter Soldier was shooting the men who’d shot Steve.  They wanted him alive.  Footsteps thudded closer, and she could hear the sound of a rifle being reloaded.  _“Ubeyte zhenshchin.”_

The second the Winter Soldier hopped over the median, she was on him.  She launched from a crouch, pushing herself off the median and jumping onto his back.  She pulled the wire from the hidden place on her left wrist and got him about the neck with it.  The men in the van stopped shooting at them, probably concerned with hitting the Soldier.  That was just as well for Natasha, who was doing her absolute damnedest to garrote the man underneath her.  She tightened her thighs to hold on as he bucked wildly, struggling to dislodge her.  She knew she had the tender flesh of his throat under the wire, but he also had his arm up and tangled in it now and was pushing it away.  She remembered this well, this incredible strength and speed and ruthlessness.  She fighting with everything she had, but it wasn’t enough.  The Winter Soldier reached back and fisted her hair.   He yanked her forward over his head and threw her into the ground.  The impact jostled the wind from her lungs.  The heavy weight of his boot pushed her down into the pavement, harsh and crushing.  His eyes were hidden behind a mask, goggles that were ruby and a black faceplate.  _“_ _Chernaya vdova. Vstanesh na moyem puti_ _, i ya ub’yu tebya.”_  The warning was a low murmur from behind the mask, but it was spoken with complete confidence.

She didn’t care.  She managed to get her hand down her leg finally and pull her pistol.  She shot, aiming for his forehead, but he jerked just in time and the bullet clipped his goggles instead.  She wasted no time, grabbing his foot and giving it a vicious twist.  Her strength and skill might have lamed a normal man, but it only succeeded in knocking him down.  That was enough, though, for her to get on her feet.  She snatched the Uzi strapped to the Winter Soldier’s back as he rolled to his knees and unloaded it mercilessly at the men in the Hummer.  A few fell with cries, their guns still shooting into the road and surrounding cars and sky as they did, and more people screamed.  Natasha tossed the spent Uzi and reached for Kate.  “Run!”

They ran across the westbound lanes of the freeway, Natasha snatching Kate’s wrist tightly and dragging her through the maze of stopped cars.  Kate was panting and shaking behind her, eyes wide.  “Natasha–”

_“Go!”_

They were nearly at the other side of the road when she heard the sound of an RPG launcher being loaded.  She pulled Kate faster and harder as she scrambled across the hood of a crashed car.  “Jump!”

Kate screamed in terror.  “What, are you crazy?”

Natasha didn’t listen and didn’t give her a choice.  She leapt off the car and over the side of the overpass, looping an arm around Kate and taking her with her, just as another RPG plowed into the mess of traffic where they had been.  The sky melted with a roar of fire and heat, but Natasha was prepared, and as they tumbled she fired the other trick up her sleeve.  The grappling hook shot up faster than they fell and hit the bottom of the overpass, latching firmly to the concrete and anchoring into it.  The cord in her hands and around her waist went taut, and they swung safely under the bridge.

Her shoes hit the ground, Kate beside her.  The young woman had a look in her eyes, a look Natasha couldn’t quite read, but there was no time to think about it.  She watched down the street from under the bridge, where a bus had flipped on its side and a few cars had crashed around the wreck.  The sedan mashed to the left of the bus abruptly detonated.  Another rocket whizzed through the air, impacting the underside of the bus by its rear, and that section went up in flames.  Two more rockets hit the other cars surrounding the bus.  People were fleeing, but with the wall of fire and wreckage, there wasn’t anywhere to go.  If Steve was alive, they were trying to trap him.

She didn’t think.  The road was clear the other way, and she could run.  But she couldn’t just leave Steve behind, not even if he’d asked her to.  If he was hurt…  She turned blazing eyes to Kate.  “Stay here.  Find cover.”  Kate didn’t move.  Natasha couldn’t waste time with that, turning and running as fast as she could to the bus.  The first shot she’d expected, and it struck the pavement by her right foot.  She sidestepped and forced more speed and power from her body.  She’d outrun snipers before and a moving target was much harder to hit.  She was Black Widow.  She was nothing if not a moving target.

But not to the Winter Soldier.

The minute she heard the crack of the rifle, she _knew_ she was going to be shot.  She knew it before the bullet struck.  Still, she wasn’t ready, and when it punched through the meat of her left thigh, she cried out.  Pain jolted up and down her leg like lightning, and she fell hard.  She didn’t quite get her hands out in time to brace her fall, and her head smacked against the road.

For what felt to be forever, Natasha was dazed, lost in fiery pain and consuming dizziness.  She came out of that stupor by sheer will and determination, blinking and blinking the tears from her eyes and trying to focus.  She clutched her bleeding leg and managed to turn around, her eyes wide with horror.  She saw the Winter Soldier hop down from the bridge, down the dozens of feet, and land on the street.  He had a handgun trained on her, tossing the rocket launcher he’d been using, and he was stalking closer and closer.  There was _nothing_ in his eyes.  Natasha scrambled away, horror leaving her shaking.  She tried to get her legs beneath her, but the pain and vertigo were bad and she couldn’t do it quickly enough.  The Soldier was looming over her in a matter of seconds, the gun pointed at her and he was going to pull the trigger.

He’d taken off his shattered goggles and was staring at her.  Those eyes.  _His eyes._

And then Steve came out of _nowhere_.  His shield flew through the air, spinning and shining in the afternoon sunlight, and struck the Soldier in the chest.  Their adversary didn’t move fast enough to block it, so it knocked him back.  Steve was there a second later, driving the Winter Soldier further away with a furious roundhouse kick.  His shield flew back to his arm as though it was tethered.  Natasha crawled along the asphalt, struggling to calm her pounding heart at that close brush with death as she watched the two of them fight.  It was a blur of blue and yellow and black and brown.  They were fast, powerful.  Natasha had watched Steve battle the Red Guardian, but this…  This was different, less about brute strength and more about skill and speed.  Steve shoved the Winter Soldier back and stepped to Natasha.  He spared a moment for her, his eyes wide with worry.  Her leg was bleeding profusely, so much so that everything was getting hazy and dim.  But she still saw the streak of silver shooting toward Steve.  “Steve!”

He turned and caught the Winter Soldier’s metal fist on his shield with a loud, rattling clang.  Steve dug his boots into the road and drove him away with every bit of his strength.  He stood still, chest heaving and covered in soot and dirt, staring furiously at the other man.  He was threatening, more so than Natasha had seen before, and obstinate.  “Get the hell away from her!” he ordered.

The Winter Soldier stared at Steve.  He stopped his attack, eyes wide with shock that was obvious even though the rest of his face was hidden.  He looked like he’d seen a ghost.

Steve guarded Natasha, holding his shield defensively.  He shook his head, his eyes narrowed, not relaxing even the slightest.  “You’re not hurting her.  _Get away_ ,” he hissed lowly.

The soldier did.  He was…  He was terrified.

But the tense, unsettling moment ended as quickly as it had come.  The bus behind them exploded again, struck by another RPG.  Natasha yelped, trying to cover herself from the fire, but Steve was there, crouching over her with his shield to protect them both.  The inferno raged for a second or two, and when they looked again, the Winter Soldier was gone and the street was silent.

Steve seemed lost, staring through the smoke wafting and blowing about them.  In the distance sirens were blaring.  Natasha scrambled to push herself up, and the sound of her clothes scraping across the asphalt drew Steve’s attention.  He was at her side in a breath.  “Are you okay?” he asked breathlessly.  His eyes were filled with panic as they traced down her wounded body before settling on the gushing hole in her leg.  He quickly stripped off his sweatshirt and wrapped it around the wound before pulling tight, putting heavy pressure on the injury.

Natasha cried out.  Her voice was a strangled, hoarse whisper as Steve continued to try and stop the bleeding.  His filthy face was shining in sweat, and his eyes were desperate.  “We have to get out of here,” Natasha whispered.  “Now.  Steve–”

He looped an arm under her knees and another about her shoulders.  “Hold on to me,” he commanded, and she did, managing to get her arm around his neck.  He lifted her like she weighed nothing and was running, sprinting through the wreckage lining the street and heading back to the overpass.  “I’ve got you, Nat.”  He was scared.  Scared for her.  “Just hold on.  Hold on.”

She tried.  There was smoke and heat.  Voices.  Steve.  Another softer, more feminine tone.  Kate.  They were running, panting, fleeing for their lives.  They were talking about her.  Steve’s big, warm hands and Kate’s smaller, colder ones touched her.  Natasha knew she was slipping into shock.  The world was becoming more and more distant, garbled, like a nightmare.  She blinked blearily, breathing as deeply as she could, and when she only saw gray shadows, she buried her face into Steve’s warm, strong chest and let her eyes close.  She knew he wouldn’t drop her, even though the world was shaking and falling apart all around them.  He was there, and he would take care of her.  Carry her.  Protect her.

 _Hold on._ She knew that even if she couldn’t, he would never let her go.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _Voz'mite yego zhivym._ – Take him alive.  
>  _Ubeyte zhenshchin._ – Kill the women.  
>  _Chernaya vdova. Vstanesh na moyem puti, i ya ub'yu tebya._ – Black Widow. Get in my way and I will kill you.


	7. Chapter 7

Natasha was drifting on the edges of consciousness where dreams and memories blurred with reality.  It was difficult to tell which was which and what was what.  She was too confused and lost in pain to try.  The world was moving.  Vibrating.  Rolling forward.  She was laying on something soft but firm, and she was cramped into a space that was too small for her.  Her head was in someone’s lap.

“Where did Captain America learn how to steal a car?”  A quiet question.  The voice wasn’t very familiar.  It was soft and higher-pitched.  A woman.  _Kate,_ her brain sluggishly offered.

“Nazi Germany.”  _Steve._   His tone was worried and ragged.  “Is she okay?” 

“The bleeding’s better, but we should really take her to a hospital.”

“It’s too dangerous.  They’ll be looking for us there.”

Cool fingers pressed gently against her throat.  “How much longer–”

 _“Until they arrive?”_ Brushov was impatient.  It wasn’t easy to see, given how tightly he always commanded his features, but she noticed.  She stood loosely at his side, obediently waiting, but his tension was driving her heart faster and faster.  One of Brushov’s lieutenants looked mortified and then terrified when he realized he was upsetting his commander.  His face was white and his eyes were wide as he floundered for some sort of answer, scrambling for the window of the warehouse to look down on the street below.  As the young man struggled to manufacture an explanation for the delay, Brushov was stiff and scowling.  Every second the boy spent embarrassing himself was one closer Brushov was coming to ending him.  She needed nothing more from her handler than a minor shift of his body, the hardening of his eyes or the clench of his jaw.  A subtle sign would unleash her wrath.

The boy was lucky, for another of Brushov’s men came into the warehouse just before she reached for her gun.  _“They’re here,”_ he announced.  A moment later two men entered.  One she recognized well.  Garanin.  The other was an older gentleman with a long face adorned by a goatee and bright white streaking his black hair by his temples.  She had never met him before, but she knew who he was.  Aleksander Lukin.  Lukin and Brushov did not get along well, so this mission was surely extremely important for them to garner some sort of truce.  A fight against a common enemy.

The men made their introductions, pleasantries that were anything but pleasant.  She didn’t listen to the conversation.  It did not include her, so it was not her place.  Instead she stared into the shadows behind Lukin.  As she stood beside her handler, another assassin stood beside Lukin.  She couldn’t see his face, but his build was tall and muscular.  His left arm was metal and adorned with the Russian star at its shoulder.  That gave her pause.  She knew the stories.  The dark figure exuded something that suggested he was cold and ruthless.  Colder and more ruthless than she was, perhaps.  _The Winter Soldier._   Brushov had wanted him for the Red Room, had wanted her to learn from him, but Lukin was apparently as protective of his assets as Brushov was of his own.  This was the first time she’d ever seen him.

“Try to keep her awake.”

“Natasha?  Open your eyes.”

“She’s got a concussion.  It’s not a bad one, but she’s out of it.”

She felt arms encircle her, warm, strong arms that she knew so well.  Steve was carrying her again, cradling her against his chest as he walked with fast, long strides.  She tried to focus on the hazy veil of gray and indistinct shapes around her.  It was night now, the last light of day washing the world in long, heavy shadows, and those blurry squares and triangles were houses.  She groaned in pain.  “Where are we?” she managed.

“We’re getting you help,” Steve said.  Her ear was against his chest, and his voice was a low, comforting rumble to her that nearly lulled her back to sleep.  “Stay with me, Nat.  I’ve got you.”

But she didn’t stay.  She went down into the chaotic splashes of memory again.  The Winter Soldier was waiting for her.  She was simultaneously excited and alarmed, but neither emotion was strong enough to be anything more than a fleeting sensation.  Before she left Volgograd, Brushov’s hardened voice reached out to her from across his office.  He was still displeased.  Worried, even, if he had the capacity to be such a thing.  And angered.  _“Be wary of the Winter Soldier, Natalia.  He’s dangerous, more so than even you.  He is a weapon that should not be left in the hands of our enemies.  He is a machine that can only bring about the terminal frost of an eternal winter.  If the moment presents itself, kill him.”_

“I’ve got you, love.  Just hang on.  You’ll be alright.”  Steve sounded more and more rattled, his voice hoarse with pain and fear.

“Are you sure we’re safe here?”

 _I’m not sure of anything anymore._  “No, but she needs help.  We need to risk it.”

Steve’s arm shifted as he traded more of her weight to one side.  Then he was knocking on a door.  She squinted, turning to look more carefully at where they were.  “Is he home?”  Kate’s soft question was louder than the cacophony of crickets and her own straining heart and Steve’s quick, shallow breaths.

The door opened.  “Hey, man,” came a surprised, uncertain voice.

Steve sagged in relief.  “Sam.  I’m really sorry about this.  We didn’t have anywhere else to go.  Can we come in?  Please.”

The moment that followed was long, even with her pain and disorientation stretching time unnaturally.  She kept blinking, trying to focus on the man who stood in front of them.  He was dark-skinned, handsome, with a goatee framing his mouth and open, friendly brown eyes that were filled with equal parts shock and worry.  Eventually the man nodded.  “Yeah, yeah.  Come on.  Get in here.”

She balled her fist in the thin fabric of Steve’s t-shirt as he stepped inside Sam’s house.  “Where should I–”

“Here.  Follow me.  What the hell happened?”

“SHIELD’s after us.”

“Shit.  She okay?”

Kate’s voice answered.  “She will be if I can get a handle on the bleeding.”

“You a doctor or something?  Sam Wilson, by the way.”

“Kate, and I’m a nurse.  Do you have a first aid kit?  Get it, please, and water.”

“Right.  There’s a guest room there, Steve.”

She drifted again as the _thud thud_ of Steve’s boots on hardwood floors softened as though he was walking on carpet now, and then the dizzying sensation of being moved away from his chest assailed her.  She tried to hang on – _don’t let me go of me!_ – but her fingers wouldn’t work right.  He sensed her distress, leaning over her.  Finally she focused on his face.  The room was filled with dim light, white and eerie against the shadows, and it made him seem pale and not quite real.  He was covered in soot and bruises, but his eyes were strong.  “Can you look at me?”  His fingers cupped her face tenderly, and his lips struggled for a weak attempt at a smile.  She tried to do as he asked, but it was so hard.  “Damn it.  What the hell were you thinking?  I told you to get out of there.  I told you to run.”

“Not going to leave you,” she managed.  Her lips hardly formed the slurred words.  “I’m your partner.”

“You’re my life,” he corrected.  His hands were tangled in hers, their fingers woven together over her chest.  “I can’t lose you.” 

It wasn’t just what he was saying.  It was the way he was saying it, raw and open and sincere.  She could see how terrified he was, shaken down to his core.  She wanted to do something – _anything_ – to make that better, but she couldn’t.  She told him once that he couldn’t protect her, couldn’t save her or change who she was.  But she knew (she’d known for a long time now) that he had.  She was terrified, too, by what he felt for her and what she felt for him.  How strong the love between them truly was.  The dependence.  And how it could drive them both into making poor decisions.  Bad choices that would compromise them.  _Weakness._ She couldn’t face that now.  Her mind was so shattered, disjointed, so she anchored herself on something simple.  She smiled weakly.  “You still can’t give me orders.  That was part of our agreement, ’member?”

He choked on half a laugh and kissed her roughly, frantically.  “Well, I’m giving you one now.  You stay with me.  And you _never_ do that again.”

Her hold on consciousness was failing her.  “Aye-aye, Cap.”

“Nat, come on.  Stay with me.”

She couldn’t.When she came back, she was in a different time and a different place.  She was clenching a gun in either hand, her back pressed to the smooth, icy blocks of the outer wall of the Kremlin.  The night was thick and deep, and with the heavy cloud cover above, there was neither moonlight nor starlight.  That was fortunate.  It was also fortunate the snow was coming down heavily but had only recently started, so her tracks would not be overly noticeable.  Still, they would need to move quickly.

She glanced up to the guard tower where she knew the Winter Soldier was waiting.  She had no evidence of it, but she knew the men who had been stationed there were dead.  The Winter Soldier had made short work of them, fast and expertly.  Now he was up there, watching her from the shadows, from great height, from all of the advantage.  She didn’t care for the exposure, but the Soldier was a sharpshooter above all else.  It was her task to flush the Minister of Defense and his cronies from the Kremlin.  And it was his to shoot them all.

“I’m so sorry about this, Sam.”

“Man, stop.  You need my help.  _Captain America_ needs my help.  I’m gonna do whatever I can.”

“You got out for a good reason.  I can’t drag you back in.  Once Natasha’s okay, we’ll be out of here.  I swear to you.”

“The hell you will.  What does SHIELD want with you?”

 _Don’t._   There was pressure on her leg, intense, brutal pressure, but she was too strong to do anything more than groan.  She squeezed the fingers clenched in her own, Steve’s fingers, and he squeezed back.  And he was smarter and more intuitive than she gave him credit for sometimes.  “I don’t know.”

Apparently Sam was smarter than she realized as well.  “It’s alright.  Don’t tell me.  I trust you know what’s best.  I’m a soldier, not a spy.”

Steve grunted a rueful laugh.  “You’re not the only one.”

“Hold her still, Steve.  She’s lucky; the bullet passed through without hitting anything major, but I still need to stitch this.”  Kate’s voice was steady, sure, more so than Natasha would have expected given the trauma they’d endured.  “It’s not going to be pretty.  I’m sorry I don’t have much for the pain.”

“I’ll get Ibuprofen,” Sam said.  “Probably some tequila wouldn’t hurt, either.”

“Vodka,” Natasha groaned.  “I’m Russian.”

Another ghost of a laugh.  “Right.  Vodka.”

“Easy, Nat.  Hang on to me.”  The pain got worse, so much so.  Steve was trying to anchor her, holding her against his chest even as she squirmed and gritted her teeth and worked through the agony as Kate worked on her wounded thigh.  He didn’t shush her, didn’t placate her with silly nonsense or trite promises that everything would be okay, said nothing at all to demean her or comfort her.  She’d been injured worse than this many times before.  She could handle it.

When the agony was too much, she went back down into the haze in her head.  The crackle of gunfire.  Men screaming, panicking, running around pathetically like proverbial chickens with their heads cut off.  Easy targets.  She moved faster, faster than them, faster than anyone, slipping among the shadows like she was born to.  Her guns rang, bullets slamming into limbs, striking life from bodies.  She danced in the snow, twirling like a ballerina, fleet and powerful as she brought down her marks.  There were too many, and some were more skilled than the average sort of military men.  That was when the Winter Soldier’s gun cracked in the distance, and bodies fell around her with splatters of red that melted the newly fallen snow the moment they landed.  He fired fast from his vantage, deadly accurate even though she was moving through the crowd she’d flushed from inside the Kremlin.  He never hit her.  He picked off those stupid enough to engage her, one after another after another.  Efficiently.  Flawlessly.

The Minister of Defense was a portly man who expected life’s gratuities to be easily gained and life’s inconveniences to be easily avoided.  He was screaming at his men, at his aides and his fellow ministers who were involved in this ill-fated attempt of a coup, trying to direct this battle like he had the power and the experience to win.  He didn’t.  The Winter Soldier was murdering his co-conspirators and protectors from afar.  Black Widow was doing the same right in front of him with powerful kicks and driving fists and lithe acrobatics.  In a matter of seconds, the fight was over, and the Minister of Defense was left alone, wide-eyed, sweating, and horrified as she stood before him.

A thud resounded to her left.  The Winter Soldier gracefully landed beside her, having jumped down dozens of feet from the guard tower to the courtyard.  He was a wraith, black and silver, sliding among the shadows.  He didn’t look at her, his face hidden behind his mask, his breath a jet of vapor before his face.  He stalked across the small distance to the panicking minister.  The pudgy fool was trying to explain, to beg for his life, to back away.  The Winter Soldier had no compassion.  No sympathy.  Nothing aside from his mission.  She watched as he pulled a gun from his belt.  The minister was sobbing now, terrified beyond measure.  The Winter Soldier held the muzzle to the rolls of the man’s brow.  He said nothing as he pulled the trigger, and their target fell, dead.

The Winter Soldier lowered his gun and walked away.  She followed him.  The snow was red with blood.  She tasted it in her mouth.  She bit her tongue hard, during the fight with before or while they were working on her leg; she wasn’t sure which.  The coppery tang was suddenly disgusting, nauseating really, and she swallowed hard.

“Here,” came a soft voice.  “You lost a lot of blood.  Drink.”  It was Kate, and she was guiding a plastic cup with a straw in it towards her lips.  Whatever was in the cup tasted artificially sweet, like Gatorade or some other sports energy drink.  “You should really be in a hospital.  I know something bad is happening, but…  We should at least call the cops.”

 _No._ When Kate pulled away, Natasha blinked in the darkness to focus on the figure leaning over her.  “Where’s Steve?”

Kate smiled faintly.  “In the bathroom.”

“Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.  I hope so.  I think so.”  Kate smiled gently.  “You should sleep.”

She shouldn’t, but she did.  She was supposed to kill the Winter Soldier.  That was her mission as much as killing the Minister of Defense, his allies, and his men.  So when they were finished at the Kremlin, she followed her target.  He was difficult to chase, difficult to track, but she did, racing through the snowy streets of Moscow.  He moved quickly to a hotel, a run-down place in a slummier part of the city.  She had no illusions; he was most certainly aware she was behind him.  He was letting her pursue him, which meant he was prepared to fight her.  Perhaps he even wanted to fight her.  When she slipped into the hotel room, he was there.  Waiting in the chair beside the bed, watching as she slid through the window.  There was no light.  She could only detect the faintest outline of him, darker shades of black and gray and the silvery glint of his arm.  He hadn’t spoken during their mission, but he spoke now.  His voice was low, its quiet timbre belying its hard edges and threatening words. _“If you fight me, I will kill you.”_

She smiled.  _“You can try.”_

 _Kill the Winter Soldier._   She hadn’t.  She wished more than anything she had.

Warm arms enfolded her, drawing her back.  “How’s the pain?” came a murmur against her ear.

It was hard to think, hard to answer.  She was exhausted.  The adrenaline from her memories fed into her fears, and she stiffened in Steve’s embrace.  The room was black.  The clock on the nightstand was too bright, and she squinted and struggled to focus on the numbers.  1:34 am.  “Can’t stay here,” she breathed, though her mind was not at all in agreement with her body.  Her body was limp and lethargic, sinking greedily into the comfort Steve always provided for her.  _This is addiction,_ she thought.  _This is weakness. This is what it feels like._   “Have to run.”

“I know.”  His lips brushed her temple.  “We will.  Tomorrow.  We’re safe for now, and you need to rest.”

“SHIELD won’t stop,” she warned.  Her voice sounded garbled and drunken to her ears, and her mouth tasted horrible.  However, the pain wasn’t so bad anymore, and Steve was hot and strong and curled around her.  “You know they’ll find us.  We can’t stay here.”  _The Winter Soldier will find us._

“Just sleep,” he ordered, his breath warm on her neck.  He sounded incredibly fatigued, half asleep himself.  His arm tightened around her stomach, his face pressed tight to her shoulder.  “S’alright.”

And fingers found their way through her hair.  Harshly and roughly, just shy of pain.  It was so dark she could hardly see him, hardly see anything more than the impression of a face and dark eyes.  The Winter Soldier’s weight was against her, heavy enough to trap her but not so much that she couldn’t escape if she wanted.  She didn’t want to, not even as those eyes filled with pleasure and his mouth claimed hers.  This should not have happened, but it was.  The fight had been brutal and fast, a dance of blades and power, and it had ended against the wall with his metal fingers around her throat and her knife against his neck.  He could have killed her, just squeezed enough to crush her windpipe, but he hadn’t.  Instead something had changed in his eyes, his eyes that were all she could see of him.  Something softer yet hungry.  She knew it well; with Alexei so recently taken from her life, she was desperate for the feelings and sensations and passions she’d come to enjoy.  She would be punished if she failed in her mission, that much she knew.  But it was hardly a concern as he yanked her arms down, disarmed her in one quick motion against which she didn’t fight, and pulled her clothes away.

They tumbled to the bed in the dark, mouths locked together and hands desperately touching and senses feasting.  It was cold and black but wild and unrestrained.  There was no love, no feeling other than pleasure and the desire for a quick but powerful release.  She lost herself in a burst of life inside her, fire surging forth from the chains her training had placed on her heart.  _She lost herself._

She found herself again.  Fingers were still in her hair.  Steve’s fingers.  They were light and gentle, weaving their way from her forehead down to her neck in a slow, languid motion that anchored her.  She jerked awake, reeling with the ghost of things she hadn’t thought about in years.  Memories danced on the edge of her mind, memories loaded with excitement and unbridled power from wanting and then taking.  She was trembling.  “Bad dream?”

 _Nightmare._   It was pouring of out her past again, so much darkness and evil, and she could hardly stand it.  She couldn’t make her voice work.  She looked to the window.  Outside there was no snow, only lush leaves and serene moonlight that slipped inside through the curtains.  But she thought she could see him.  A phantom, hidden as always in the shadows.  He stared at her, lingering for just this moment as he traced her body with his eyes.  They were somehow bright in the consuming darkness, alive with something she couldn’t explain, something impure and twisted and even sad.

Then he was gone, like he’d never been there at all.

“Natasha?”  Steve tightened his grip around her.  “I’ve got you.  I’m right here.  Go back to sleep.”

Those eyes.  Dark and deep and haunting.  She knew them.  _She knew him_.

But she couldn’t hold onto that thought or anything else as the darkness swooped in around her and took her back again.

* * *

_James Barnes is the Winter Soldier._

Natasha came awake with a gasp.  The room around her was bright, filled with the early light of a sunny, new day.  She immediately regretted the suddenness of snapping to awareness as pain pulsed in her head and wracked her body.  Her leg felt like it was on fire, a throbbing, hateful thing that was unfortunately attached to her.  She glanced down herself and saw it was heavily bandaged atop a pillow that had once been white.  The lower half of her pants had been cut away, revealing a mess of bruised skin and dried blood.  She swallowed thickly, her tongue a stiff, revolting lump in her mouth, and sagged down into the pillow behind her again, a curse slipping from her lips in Russian.  She couldn’t move, and it wasn’t just because she felt like she’d been hit by a truck.  Steve was asleep beside her, his one arm thrown across her stomach like a lead weight and his other above her head on the pillows.  He was breathing slowly and evenly through parted, dry lips.  He’d washed off some of the soot and grime, but his face was flushed.  “Steve?” she croaked.  She sounded as bad as she felt.  “Steve?”  He didn’t wake up.  Natasha groaned, taking his arm gently by the wrist and shifting it off of her.  They had to move.  They had to go.  They weren’t safe here.  SHIELD would come for them.  The Winter Soldier would come for them.

The Winter Soldier.  _It’s Barnes._

The thought came barreling out of the fog in her head with all the grace and power of a freight train.  She winced, her skull resonating miserably with each troubled beat of her heart, and saw him again.  Barnes’ eyes staring at her yesterday at the Captain America exhibit.  The Winter Soldier’s eyes, staring at her as he leaned over her for a moment before she’d wrapped her hands in his hair and pulled him on top of her…  _His_ eyes, deadened as he loomed with his gun drawn.  _No.  It can’t be._   Natasha was shaking and shaking very badly.  She sat up with great effort, swinging her uninjured leg to the floor before gingerly moving the other after it.  The pain was excruciating, but she’d been in pain like this before and overcome it.  And she had to now.  She tried to think, tried to focus through the agony assailing her and the terror robbing her of her breath.  _It can’t be true.  It’s not right.  It can’t be true!_

_Bucky Barnes is the Winter Soldier.  He is.  He has to be._

_Oh, God.  No._

She turned, feeling sick and lightheaded, and rubbed Steve’s bicep vigorously.  “Steve,” she called.  Her throat was dry and tight with a lump she couldn’t swallow away.  She needed to tell him.  _You don’t have any proof.  You don’t know for sure._   That was true.  There _was_ no proof, and her suspicions entirely hinged on a single night of pleasure more than eight years ago that had ended as quickly and abruptly as it had started.  Still, as her mind raced through the paltry facts – _he died seventy years ago. He fell from a train and died.  It can’t be him.  It can’t be him!_ – she knew that niggling voice insisting that the world’s most dangerous assassin was Steve’s best friend was telling her the truth.  “Steve!”

“Let him sleep.”

She was startled, far more startled than she should have been.  She turned, the stiff muscles of her back protesting, to find who she assumed to be Sam Wilson standing in the entrance to the bedroom.  He tipped his head to Steve’s slumbering form.  “Think he needs it bad.”  He had a couple of glasses of water and a bottle of ibuprofen.  He offered a nonthreatening smile to her as he handed her the pills and the water.  “And you probably need that just as much.  I’m Sam Wilson.”

Natasha could hardly manage a thought.  Nothing felt quite real, like the world was off-kilter from the realization she’d inexorably made.  She took the ibuprofen and the water.  Sam definitely noticed how her fingers were shaking, but he didn’t say anything about it.  “Pretty sure bleeding all over your bed qualifies as an introduction,” Natasha dryly said, surprising herself because she honestly hadn’t thought about saying anything at all.

Sam smiled wider, nodding slightly.  “How’re you feeling?”  He glanced to her lamed leg where it was bent over the edge of the bed.  “Stupid question, I bet.”

Natasha shook her head.  “I’m okay.”  She downed the pills and drank the entire glass of water.

“Kinda like how Steve’s always okay, right.”  She appraised Sam evenly after that, wondering how he could have so quickly figured Steve out from what had surely only been a meeting or two.  She wondered if Sam could figure her out as easily, if he could read past the tense set of her shoulders and the shifting nature of her gaze to see the disquiet bubbling beneath the surface.  She didn’t feel strong enough or in control enough to disguise how worried and frightened she was, not with Fury dead and Clint trapped at the Triskelion and SHIELD after Steve.  Not with the truth about the Winter Soldier seeping like icy water through her thoughts.  “Kate’s still sleeping, but when she gets up, she should check out your leg again before we leave.”

“We?”  There was no “we”.

Sam’s expression softened.  “I don’t know what’s going on.  I don’t know what you’re running from.  I don’t know much about SHIELD, and I don’t know you, but I had posters of Captain America up on my walls as a kid.  He’s a big deal for the soldiers in this country, you know, and if he needs help?  I’m going to do whatever I can to help him.”

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” Natasha warned him.  Her voice was harder than she intended.  “There won’t be a way back out.”  That was the truth, at least, and she was certain of it.  There never was a way back out.

“Fine.  All I know is I’m not letting you guys run out of here being hunted.”  That word cut through to her heart.  _Hunted._   Someone else might have argued more, tried to convince this man (who by all accounts was barely more than an acquaintance to Steve and to her a stranger) not to throw his life away like this.  They _were_ being hunted, after all, by the Winter Soldier and SHIELD; she still wasn’t certain what the link between them was (if there was a link at all), and neither of those forces were forgiving or merciful.  Steve would have argued for sure.  But she didn’t.

Sam smiled thinly.  “Just do me a favor and don’t treat me like a moron.  If you don’t want to tell me what’s going on, that’s fine.  I can deal with that.  Hell, maybe it’s better.  If SHIELD catches us, I won’t be able to rat you guys out if they torture me.  SHIELD does that kind of shit, I assume.  Torture people.”

She wasn’t sure if it was disgust or fear in his voice, but it sounded like some sort of combination of the two masked by a pathetic attempt at levity.  She didn’t answer, and that was an answer in and of itself.  “Right,” Sam said, his face falling slightly.  “Take the out now, right?”  She still didn’t answer.  “Look, all I know is whatever’s chasing you…  Well, from what Steve said you can use all the help you can get.”

_The Winter Soldier.  He’s Barnes._

She had to tell Steve.  She turned before she even thought to, looking back at Steve who was still asleep.  That was odd; two months spent sharing a bed with Steve had taught her he was generally an extremely light sleeper.  She needed him awake now, awake to run from this place before they were trapped, awake to _listen_ to what she needed to say.  And she was still selfish.  She wanted his comfort.  It was strong enough to defeat her inhibitions _yet again_ , and Sam probably knew already of their relationship (how could he not?), so she swept her hand down Steve’s cheek.

He was warm, unnaturally so.  Natasha’s brow furrowed in concern and she angled herself about to get closer.  “Steve,” she prodded, concern dashing her thoughts.  She laid her hand on his forehead, brushing his hair away.  He definitely had a fever and a fairly high one.  He didn’t – couldn’t – get sick, at least not in ordinary circumstances, which meant he was hurt, and hurt significantly enough that it had compromised his immune system and the serum’s defenses.  And she had slept beside him all night, grounded in his warmth, and hadn’t noticed.  Worry burst through her, worry upon which Sam immediately picked up.  “Steve, wake up.”

Harsher shaking got Steve moving, and he rolled onto his back with a rough groan and an arm thrown over his eyes.  “What?”  He scrubbed his hand down his face, making no effort to hide his wince.  “What time is it?”

“What’s wrong with you?” she demanded, unable to keep the sharp edge from her tone.

“What’s wrong with me?  Huh?  Nat, are you–”

“ _Don’t_ , Rogers.  Don’t you dare.  What’s wrong?”  She grabbed his wrist and dragged it away from his face, trying to get a better look at him.  Steve grunted, blinking rapidly to clear the fog of sleep, and rubbed the heel of his palm in one eye.  Natasha refused to let him off the hook, even as he sat up and drew a deep breath and gathered himself.  She knew him, knew the bullshit he always pulled when it came to being hurt.  Before the mess in Crimea, he really hadn’t been wounded much, at least not to her knowledge.  But she’d seen him play down his injuries before.  After the Battle of New York.  Recently.  The goddamn super soldier serum made it so that he could ignore them and get away with it enough to make it seem okay when it really wasn’t.  All her nightmares battered at her patience.  “You’re hurt.  Don’t lie.”

Steve glanced at her out of the corner of his eye.  He sagged, bowing his head a little like he’d been discovered so there was no point in continuing with his act.  “I think there’s a bullet in my shoulder.”

“What?” Sam asked incredulously.

Natasha was more angry than surprised.  “You think?”

“Pretty sure.”

It didn’t seem like he’d been shot during the fight yesterday (although she hadn’t had her eye on him the whole time and everything had happened so fast she could have missed it).  Furthermore, there was no way he could have gotten sick so quickly from a gunshot wound only hours old.  An image of that video from the docks in Algiers flashed through her addled mind and she realized that Sitwell had shot him.  “How long?” she demanded, struggling to hold onto her frayed patience and composure.

Steve winced again.  “Three days.”

“Three days?  You’ve been running around with a bullet in your shoulder for three days.  Holy shit.”

Steve managed a lop-sided smile for Sam.  “Give or take.  I healed up around it.  Probably should get it out, but it doesn’t have to be done now.”

Sam looked dismayed and surprised.  “Probably?”

“I tried, but there wasn’t much time and I couldn’t get at it too well.”  Steve rotated his left shoulder experimentally and grimaced harder.  The motion was stilted.  Someone less familiar with him might not have noticed, but Natasha did.  The joint wasn’t functioning right, which likely meant the bullet was lodged inside it and preventing it from healing properly.  And it had likely introduced infection, either from the initial shot but more likely from Steve’s attempts to get it out.  And from whatever mud and dirt and who knew what in which he’d been since then.  “It’s not a big deal.  Leave it.”

Natasha wasn’t satisfied with that.  Neither was Sam, frankly.  Steve knew his body and the extremes of which it was capable better than anyone, so if it wasn’t causing him serious distress, it probably could be left as it was.  Walking around with bullets inside you was something of an occupational hazard, part and parcel of being a soldier or a spy.  And the infection (while momentarily distressing) was not an issue.  Steve’s enhanced immune system would likely defeat it in short order.  But Steve was obviously in pain, and they had a moment now to take care of it.  And she needed the time.  The time to muster up the courage to say what she had to say to him.

“Get up,” Sam ordered gently.  “Let’s get it cleaned up.”

“Sam,” Steve protested.

“Up.  Then we’ll get the hell out of here.”

Steve glanced at Sam, with whom he’d already seemingly formed this easy friendship.  Then he turned to Natasha, but she suddenly couldn’t meet his gaze.  _Barnes.  You need to tell him about Barnes._   Sitting still was impossible.  Being motionless allowed her thoughts to catch up with her, so she flung her legs to the floor again and tried to stand.  “Nat, whoa.  Wait!”  Steve was there, and Sam, steadying her. 

She pulled away from their hands.  “I’m fine,” she said tensely, as though challenging them to argue with her.  Sam was surprised, and Steve looked a tad hurt at her brusque refusal of his help.  She hated this reaction she had whenever she was upset about her past, this bitter anger and drive to push Steve away.  It had nearly destroyed their friendship and trust in each other in Crimea.  She wasn’t about to let it damage them now, not when so much depended on them and their faith in each other, so she softened her expression and her tone.  “I’m fine.”  She put weight on her leg.  It hurt badly, so much so that for a moment the room spun and she questioned her sanity, but she breathed through it.  She knew she wasn’t fooling Steve; he was watching her with his worry plain as day all over his face.  She felt bad for getting shot, for frightening him.  She felt bad for everything, including things she hadn’t said yet.  The pain was so overwhelming she nearly lost her composure, but she didn’t.  She just tested her weight on her damaged leg, the aggravated muscles and skin stretching around the injury.  It was bearable.

“Bathroom.”  Sam gestured to the adjacent washroom.  Steve lingered a moment more, observing Natasha and making no effort to hide his concern, before shuffling to the bathroom.  Sam moved fast, urgency in his step like it was really sinking in that he had two fugitive SHIELD agents in his house.  He pawned through the drawers of the guestroom, finding a change of clothes.  One set clearly belonged to a woman.  He handed them to Natasha.

Natasha cocked an eyebrow, struggling to summon her normal cool.  “Old girlfriend?”

“Sister.  Probably too small, but it’s better than nothing.”  Sam looked in the bathroom where Steve was sitting on the edge of the tub.  “Want me to wake Kate?”

Steve was gingerly pulling his shirt off.  “No, let her sleep.  She’s done too much already.”  The bloodied cloth came away and revealed a reddened scab on his shoulder, right below his collar bone.  It was large and messy, caked with dried blood and inflamed.  The skin around it looked hot and irritated, spidery lines of red fanning out from the spot.  It had obviously healed and been reopened a few times.  In addition to that, a colorful and motley assortment of deep bruises decorated his chest, spreading out from his left flank and down his hip.

Sam grimaced.  “Let me get some stuff.  Back in a second.”

Natasha stepped closer once Sam was gone, limping into the bathroom.  Steve looked away from the mess of his shoulder at her approach.  He gave her a weak smile.  “Want my help?”

“Steve, I–”

“Come here.”  He was on his feet again, reaching for her.  She came closer, keeping her weight off of her bad leg, and let him undress her.  His hands were tender and gentle as they helped her pull her ruined, blood-soaked pants down.  The bandage around her thigh was thick, but she could tell the stitches had been made by experienced hands and the wound had been dressed well.  He took the clean clothes from her and eased her legs into the pants one at a time before pulling them up to her waist.  He carefully removed her ripped top, leaning in to plant a quick, soft kiss to her shoulder, before aiding her in sliding her arms through the sleeves of the new shirt.  He sank back down onto the edge of the tub before beginning to button it.  She didn’t need this help, not in the least, but it was comforting to have him take care of her like this.  It always was.  _Addiction._ She banished the thought and tried not to shiver.  Finally he reached down to tie her shoes.  When he was done, his fingers slipped carefully back up her legs, ghosting over the wound with pained reverence, before coming to rest on her hips.  It didn’t take much for his head to sink tiredly into her stomach.  Natasha wove her fingers through his hair, tucking him to her and holding him tight.  Already the fever seemed lessened.  “That drive,” he said softly.  “When I took it off the _Lemurian Star_ , there was a log of where it’s been.  Lots of locations, but one was repeated a lot.  39-23’17” North, 075-19’51” West.  Whatever’s there has to do with whatever is on the drive.  And Sitwell mentioned something called Project: Insight.”  _Project: Insight.  Operation: Paperclip._ “You know what that is?”

She closed her eyes.  She couldn’t focus on this.  _Tell him.  You need to tell him._   Tell him what?  She had no proof, nothing beyond a hazy memory that until that morning she hadn’t acknowledged in what felt like forever.  She had nothing beyond a chance connection between a ghost from her past and a picture in a museum.  _It can’t be him.  It can’t._ She was talking.  Her lips were moving, and her voice was quietly filling the bathroom, but she was numb and lost.  “No.  But I know who killed Fury,” she announced.  “I know who’s after you.”

Steve turned his head and gazed up at her, his eyes teeming with concern and confusion.  “Who is he?”

She faltered.  The words wouldn’t come.  She couldn’t hurt him like this.  She couldn’t do it.  She’d promised herself she’d never hurt him again, and now…  “Most of the intelligence community doesn’t believe he exists.  The ones that do call him the Winter Soldier.  He’s credited with dozens of high-profile assassinations over the last fifty years.”

He squinted, the confusion outpacing the concern.  “That’s not possible.  He’s got to be a ghost story.”

She shook her head.  “No, he’s not.  When Brushov was my handler, I worked with him once.”  She released a slow breath, fighting against the pull of her memories and distancing herself from the mess of emotions inside her.  “Back then he was the weapon of General Aleksander Lukin, another higher-up in the Russian military who was a sometimes ally of Brushov.  Lukin and Brushov wanted to put down a possible coup in the Russian government, one that would have proven extremely disadvantageous to the both of them had it succeeded.  The Winter Soldier and I completed the mission.  Afterwards, I was supposed to kill him, but…  I didn’t do it.”  _I couldn’t do it._ And she couldn’t do this.  She couldn’t make herself tell him more.  Steve looked at her with expectant eyes, _innocent_ eyes that cut straight through to her heart like a knife.  She wavered, her leg throbbing.  “I didn’t see him again for years.  In 2009, I was escorting a nuclear scientist out of Iran.  The Winter Soldier shot out my tires near Odessa, and we ended up going straight over a cliff.  I pulled us out, but the Winter Soldier was there.  I was covering my scientist.  This scar?”  She lifted her shirt slightly to reveal the shiny, raised marks of flesh adorning the skin above and just to the right of her left hip.  “He shot the scientist straight through me.”

Steve stared at the scar before brushing his thumb over it.  Natasha went on because the silence was too stressful, too damning.  “Whoever he’s working for now, it’s someone with a lot of power.  Someone ruthless.  He’s…  He’s a machine, Steve.  He doesn’t think or feel.  And he doesn’t stop.”

They were quiet with that.  Steve sagged slightly, leaning into Natasha wearily.  “Then we have to get some place safe,” he murmured.  “And we have to move fast.”

 _Tell him._ “Steve, I…”  _Tell him now._

“What?” he asked.  She hadn’t meant to look at him, tried so hard to keep her eyes focused on the white grout of the tile inside Sam’s shower to stay firm, but her gaze shot downward of its own accord and met his.  He was so open, waiting for her to speak, offering her everything and asking for nothing in return.  He was always this way.  Giving.  Selfless.  _Trusting_.  For the first time since they’d come back from Russia and she’d moved into his life, she wasn’t sure of herself.  The inclination to run and hide and bury the damn truth down so deep that it would never again see any light…  That inclination was so strong.  She couldn’t hurt him.  She couldn’t do it.

“What’s the matter?  Tell me.”  _Tell him._ He took her hesitation as a sign that she needed his support and solace, which she did, but not for the reasons he thought.  “It’ll be alright,” he swore when her silence wore on too long.  “Whatever it is, we’ll face it together.”  He had no idea.  _What if it’s not true?  What if he’s not Barnes?  I can’t do that to him.  I can’t…_ She couldn’t explain it.  It was impossible that a soldier who’d fallen hundreds of feet from a train in the wintry mountains of Switzerland seventy years ago could be the world’s deadliest assassin.  It just _couldn’t_ be possible.  This was the product of her imagination, of her paranoia, of terror and trauma mixing her memories of the Winter Soldier with some random and unrelated aspect of something she’d seen.  _It’s not real._

 _But what if it is real?_ The mere concept was inconceivable.  And she had an obligation to be truthful with Steve.  _Tell him now._   Christ, she couldn’t make herself do it.

A scuffle in the room beyond ended their fleeting moment of privacy.  Sam was there, bearing more bandages and supplies, and behind him Kate followed.  She was rumpled from sleep, pale and troubled like she was questioning if yesterday’s incredible and dangerous events could possibly be real.  She pulled herself together with remarkable poise, though.  “You were shot?  You should have said something.”

Natasha stepped aside.  Steve didn’t look pleased.  “Kate, you should go.  You’ve already done too much.”

“I tried to tell her that,” Sam insisted.

The young woman pushed her way inside the bathroom, eyeing Steve’s shoulder critically.  She knelt on Steve’s side, sliding her fingers into another pair of latex gloves.  She touched the swollen gunshot wound carefully.  “The bullet’s still inside?”

“It’s in the joint.  I can feel it in there, up against my shoulder blade.”

Kate stood, moving her hands around Steve’s shoulder to the back of it.  Something about the way she touched him bothered Natasha, but given how confused and generally lousy she was feeling, it probably wasn’t anything more than simple, irrational jealousy ( _again_ ).  There wasn’t an exit wound in Steve’s back, so the bullet probably was lodged exactly where he thought it was.  “I could do more damage trying to find it.  You need surgery.”

Steve shook his head.  “No, I don’t.  I’ll heal.  Just pull it out.”

Kate looks aghast.  “That – that’s crazy.  I can’t do that.”

Sometimes it was all too easy to forget that Captain America had secrets too, secrets of which the general public was not aware, the serum’s regenerative powers among them.  Steve smiled disarmingly at Kate and grabbed her hand as it moved from shoulder.  “I’ll heal.  Trust me.  And trust me when I tell you that you don’t need to do it, either.”

For a civilian, Kate was certainly prepared to dive into something as hard-core as digging a bullet out of someone she barely knew.  “Alright.  Just hold on.”  She went back to the supplies Sam had brought, among them her own messenger bag which Natasha saw now had been loaded with hospital grade first aid equipment.

Sam came closer.  “You sure about this?”

Steve managed another soft grin.  “Yeah.  I need my arm in better shape.”

Sam nodded.  “You’re all kinds of crazy, Rogers.  Both of you are.”

“Yeah.”

Sam’s eyes darted to Natasha.  “Sit.  You look like you’re gonna pass out.”  Natasha shot an angry glare at Wilson, but he wasn’t daunted by it.  She was irritated enough to keep it up, as ridiculous and childish as it was, for a moment before Steve grabbed her wrist and gently and carefully pulled her to sit down on the tub beside him.  Taking the pressure of standing on her leg away was more relief than she wanted to admit.

Kate readied a scalpel and a long pair of forceps.  “I don’t have anything for the pain,” she admitted, shooting Steve a worried glance.

“Not a problem,” he answered.

She seemed flummoxed by that, fussing over her tools before uncapping the scalpel and going to work.  Natasha couldn’t see from her vantage, but something told her she should be glad for it.  Steve jerked, white-faced and clenching his jaw.  Sam was quick to stand over Kate as she reopened the injury, supplying bandages as needed to contend with the bleeding.  Steve’s breathing quickly grew more labored.  His cheeks and brow shone in perspiration as he struggled through the pain, forcing himself to inhale and exhale in a slow, steady pattern.  His one hand was curled over the fiberglass of the tub, his knuckles white and his fingers shaking.  His other was clenched around the dirty denim of his jeans over his knee.  The bathroom was silent for what felt to be forever, the quiet punctuated by only shallow, fast heartbeats and short, pained breaths.

“How is this not infected worse than it is?” Kate eventually asked.  The question seemed rhetorical, and that was just as well because no one felt up to answering.  She set the bloodied scalpel down and reached for the forceps, experimentally testing the plastic utensil before returning to the wound.  “There’s a lot of dirt and gunk in here.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Steve managed through gritted teeth.

“You’re already running a fever.  What about–”

“Don’t worry about it,” he said again.  “Just clean it up as best you can and get the bullet out.”  Natasha didn’t miss Kate’s concerned glance up at Steve’s face, like she thought he was crazy, but she nodded and reached for a saline wash bottle and antibiotic salve. 

Sam helped without being asked, flushing out the wound with the bottle she gave him as she dug inside for the bullet.  “Who shot you?  The same guy you were telling me about?”

Steve was white, dizzy, and fevered, clamming up involuntarily.  “No,” he grunted.  “Another SHIELD agent.”

Sam didn’t seem pleased with that.  “Fantastic.  Traitors in your midst?”

Steve groaned.  Natasha took his hand from where he was intently rubbing his knee, curling her fingers through his to get him to stop and focus on something else.  He released a breath he’d been holding and relaxed slightly, shifting his efforts to holding Natasha’s hand and not crushing it.  “Seems that way,” he said.  “SHIELD’s Director was assassinated yesterday afternoon.”

“That’s bad,” Sam commented, fully aware of the breadth of his understatement.

“I got it,” Kate suddenly announced.  Steve jerked, his hand clenching Natasha’s tightly enough to be painful before he got control of himself.  “Hold really still.”  The bathroom descended into complete silence again for a few long seconds as Kate maneuvered the forceps deep inside Steve’s shoulder, Sam washing the flow of blood away so that it ran down Steve’s side and puddled on the floor by his feet.  Normally this sort of thing didn’t faze Natasha, but given her own wounds and exhaustion, she felt decidedly sick watching the pink water drip down the tub.  She made herself breathe, forcing down the burning in the back of her throat, and look away.  “There.”  Kate had the bullet clamped between the forceps, a bloody, mashed thing that had mushroomed on impact with Steve’s bones.  She peered at it for a moment before dropping it into a plastic bag that Sam held for her.  Natasha grabbed a few bandages from the stack Kate had brought, ripping the sterile wrappers off before leaning over to press them firmly against Steve’s shoulder.  Getting the bullet free had caused the wound to start bleeding again in earnest.  “Thanks.  I’ll get this stitched up, and then I’ll look at your leg.  Let me get the suture kit.”

She was up and out of the bathroom.  Sam took over for Natasha, kneeling where Kate had been and putting heavy pressure on Steve’s shoulder.  “Is there anyone we can trust?”

Steve looked relieved that it was over.  His hand shook slightly as he scrubbed it down his face.  He turned and appraised Natasha helplessly.  “I don’t know.  If there’s some sort of faction infiltrating SHIELD, it makes sense the STRIKE Team is involved.  But whether or not it goes up to Pierce…”

“It does,” Natasha softly supplied.  “It has to.”

That made the situation seem even direr.  Steve sighed as Sam pulled the sodden bandages away to check beneath.  Already the bleeding had slowed.  Sam shook his head, surprised and alarmed like he was realizing all the stories he’d heard about Captain America were true.  “Where the hell can we go that SHIELD won’t be able to see?  They have eyes and ears everywhere, don’t they?”  He really had no idea how bad it was.  Running from SHIELD was going to be difficult to say the least, especially since Steve was so well-known to the American public.  SHIELD probably had every local law enforcement officer from here to the West Coast on the look-out.  He’d been damn lucky he’d been able to slip back into DC before the manhunt had begun in earnest.  And if the Winter Soldier was chasing them…

“We need to get to Tony,” Steve declared.  He rolled his shoulder again, grimacing as he did so but the pain clearly wasn’t much of a deterrent.

“Tony Stark?”

“He’s got no love for SHIELD,” Steve explained.  “He’ll help us.”

Sam looked between the two of them.  He didn’t doubt, at least not that they could see.  He didn’t question.  “Alright, I’m going to get some stuff together.  Let’s go while we can.  If we move fast we can be in New York in four hours.  That’s where we’re headed, right?”  Steve nodded.  Sam was up and out of the bathroom before they could say anything else.

Natasha took the bandages, peeling them away gently to check the bleeding.  “SHIELD will be expecting us to go to Stark,” she quietly and solemnly announced.

“I know,” Steve quietly responded, “but I don’t see another choice.  We need to know what’s on that drive.”

She stared at him again, unable to tear her eyes away, and everything was back.  The Winter Soldier.  Barnes.  _Tell him the truth.  Tell him now._   _You have to do this.  You have to._ Her hands came to cup his jaw, her thumbs sweeping tenderly across his cheekbones, and she lifted his face.  She couldn’t make herself speak, her words failing her stupendously even though she drew a breath and opened her mouth.  He looked into her eyes, his unwavering and strong.  “Nat, what is it?”  She brushed her thumb over his lower lip.  The prickle of a couple of days’ worth of facial hair lining his jaw was so odd against her fingers.  Steve was always clean-shaven.  Seeing him this unkempt with his eyes unnaturally bright from the fever made her feel even more unsettled.  “You know you can tell me anything.  What’s wrong?”  He gave half a smile.  “Besides the obvious.”

 _Tell him.  If it’s true, he needs to know.  He needs to know now._ The words prodded against the seam of her lips, insistent.  Driven.  Certain, even if she wasn’t.  She gasped something that could have been a sob, pulling him up because her leg hurt too much to permit her to bend down.  Her mouth desperately claimed his, wet and hot, stealing this moment because she was afraid.  Because she wanted to erase that memory threatening every second now, that memory of those dark eyes and rough lips and demanding hands.  Steve’s lips were soft and his hands were always tender and treated her with respect and his eyes were always so clear, so light, so beautiful.  How could she tell him the truth?  _No, I can’t._

He pulled away to take a breath.  “Nat–”

 _Tell him!_   “Steve, the Winter Soldier…  He’s–”

“Sorry.”  Kate’s voice from the entrance to the bathroom interrupted them, and Natasha stiffened and moved away from Steve as though burned.  Kate was embarrassed and uncertain, but she still strode back to Steve’s side with her kit.  She crouched, opening the case.  “I’ll be quick,” she promised.

“You probably don’t need to,” Steve said.  He pulled the bandage away and scrutinized the wound.  “Just wrap it up.  It’s fine.  We have to go.”

“I’m a nurse,” Kate reminded, her voice a tad terse. “This is my job.  And after everything we went through together yesterday I hope you trust me to do it right.  So just let me make sure it’s fine, okay?”  Steve nodded after a moment, maybe a little surprised by her attitude, and she started cleaning the wound further.  “Just another few minutes.”

There was just something about how she said that, not quite genuinely like she had some ulterior motive in making them wait to leave that she was trying to mask with concern and prudence.  That bothered Natasha as she stood there and watched.  And then things she hadn’t thought about since yesterday – things she really hadn’t had the time or inclination to consider – prodded against her attention.  Steve was thanking Kate for helping them, for taking care of Natasha’s leg and his shoulder, and he was asking her to stay out of it for her own safety now, to go home to her family and get away from DC, to pretend none of this had ever happened.  Kate was arguing, claiming they needed her help, but again, it seemed _forced_ , as if she was hiding something.  She hadn’t seemed this way before, had she?  And how the hell had she followed Natasha to the museum yesterday?  Natasha was among the best in the world at concealing her tracks and eluding detection, and a _civilian_ had managed to find her?

Unless she wasn’t a civilian.

Kate shifted just so, and Natasha’s eyes darted to the unmistakable outline of a gun in the back of her pants.  She’d arranged her t-shirt and sweater to obscure it, but Natasha was a master of details, and she saw it right away.She held her breath, the hot rush of adrenaline charging her frazzled nerves, and fought to stay still.  But something must have betrayed her, the slight stiffening of her form or the hardly noticeable suck of air between her lips, _something_ , because Kate was on her feet, whirling and drawing her weapon.  She pointed it at Natasha, coolly and confidently.  “Stay back.  Hands up,” she ordered.  Her eyes were narrowed, her hands steady where they were wrapped around her firearm.  It was standard issue, Natasha saw.  SHIELD issue.  _Shit._

“Kate?”  Steve was on his feet.

Kate (or whoever she was) backed up, shifting her aim to Steve.  She was getting flustered; Natasha knew the game well enough to see that.  “Captain Rogers, I’m Agent Thirteen of SHIELD Special Services.  I’m under orders to bring you in.”

“You’re…”  Steve couldn’t quite get his mind around it.  He darted his gaze between the two women.  His expression collapsed in dismayed realization.  They’d been deceived.  For _months._   They’d been _played_.  How could they have been so stupid?  “Damn it.”

“Please don’t make this harder than it has to be.  SHIELD is on its way.  They’ll be here in a matter of minutes.  It’s best you surrender now.  _Please_.”  That last word was spoken with a hint of desperation.  She knew she couldn’t handle the two of them, Captain America and Black Widow, even as injured as they were.  She was outnumbered, and were it not for the gun and the element of surprise, this situation would have been over already.  The tense moment dragged on, her eyes shifting between the two Avengers, her form growing increasingly rigid with the realization that she’d been discovered before whatever reinforcements she’d summoned had arrived.  “SHIELD doesn’t want you hurt, Captain,” she eventually said.  She was trying to disarm Steve with a promise of compassion and leniency.  “They want to protect you.  They just want answers, same as you.”

 _Bullshit._   And Natasha would have attacked, even with the gun pointed it at her and her leg lamed, but there was thankfully no need.  Sam was suddenly there, and his arm wrapped around Kate’s neck from behind.  The gun went off, the bullet firing into the ceiling as Kate struggled.  Steve moved fast, capably prying the weapon from Kate’s fingers.  Once he did, Sam shoved her down onto the tiled floor of the bathroom.  She looked up at them, unafraid, her face schooled into a stern expression of distrust and frustration.  Sam shook his head, not so composed.  “Jesus Christ.  What the hell’s going on?  What do we do–”

Natasha answered the question before he finished asking it.  Despite her injury, she snapped her good foot out and caught Kate on the side of her head.  The young woman dropped to the floor, unconscious.

Sam frowned, breathing heavily.  “Shit.”

Steve was already moving, handing Natasha the gun and pushing past Sam to the bedroom beyond.  He snatched the clean shirt Sam had collected for him from the bed and yanked it on.  He ran to the window, trying to stay out of the line of sight from outside.  He peeked through the blinds.  Natasha could see his shoulders grow taut under the gray fabric of the t-shirt.  “She’s right.  They’re coming.  They’re not being subtle about it.”

“What the hell,” Sam breathed, rushing out to join Steve.  He shook his head.  “We have to get out of here.”

Now Natasha hear could engines.  A lot of them.  She couldn’t see as much out the window from her vantage, but the slew of black SUVs turning down the far end of the street beyond was pretty undeniable.  They had seconds only.  Steve charged away from the window.  “Backdoor?”

Sam nodded.  “Yeah, but we’ll never outrun them.”

She saw that glint in Steve’s eyes as he came closer, and she knew what he was going to suggest before the words were out of his mouth.  “You two go.  I’ll stay.”

 _“What?”_   Sam didn’t know Steve as well as she did so he was surprised.  Natasha had expected it.  She had expected it, and the minute those blue eyes, hard with certainty, held hers, she knew his reasoning was right.  But she couldn’t accept it, couldn’t fathom it.  _No.  No no no–_

Steve was adamant.  “It’s me they’re after.  I’ll stay.  Give you two a chance to escape.”

“That’s fucking crazy!  Come on!” Sam raged helplessly.

“You’re right; we’ll never outrun them like this.  If I go with them, you can get away.”  Steve didn’t look away from her, not for a second, not even when the sound of car doors opening and closing resounded through the early morning.  Natasha felt it jolt her, like a bolt of lightning jabbing into her heart, and the brightly lit room was spinning and contracting around her.  Steve reached into the pocket of his jeans and grabbed the USB drive.  He took her hand and dropped it in her palm.  His fingers forced hers to curl tightly around it.  “Take this to Stark,” he breathed.  “Don’t let them get their hands on it no matter what.  You hear me?  _No matter what._ Don’t come for me until you get this to Tony.”

 _No!_ She shook her head.  She couldn’t help herself.  Damn herself and her emotions.  Even if there was no choice and his logic was sound, she couldn’t just let him sacrifice himself like this!  Not again.  Not for SHIELD or whatever was left of it.  Not for her.  “Steve, don’t–”

“I think I can distract them a few hours.  By the time they start looking for you, it’ll be too late.”

“You can’t–”

“Yes, I can!” he argued.  “And I have to.  This is the only way.  The only way to keep you and that drive safe.  That’s the only thing that matters.”  _Keeping you safe._

Tears burned her eyes, tears that she couldn’t let herself cry because if she did, she wouldn’t have the strength to stop herself.  She wouldn’t have the strength to leave him.  To let him go again.  “Please, you need to listen.  I need to tell you something–”

Steve was angry.  Panicked.  “There’s no time!” And he kissed her, fiery, frantic, and powerful, yanking her close until he was all she could taste and touch and feel.  Not a second could be spent on tenderness, on weakness, on terror or doubt or _anything_.  She was breathless as he pulled away and squeezed her against his chest.  “I love you,” he whispered into her hair.  “I love you.  And I’ll be okay.  I promise.  Don’t worry about me.  Now go!”

And that was it.  Steve pushed her to Sam, Sam who grabbed her arm tightly and dragged her limping form out of the bedroom.  She staggered mindlessly, senselessly, and everything seemed to slow as Steve snatched his shield from the floor beside the bed and jumped out of the window.  The blinds were ripped free and glass shattered, but in a blink he was outside and running fast.  Running and leading SHIELD away from them.

Natasha couldn’t think.  She couldn’t feel.  There might have been pain and fear and panic.  If there was, it was hollow, distant, and unimportant.  As Sam pulled her through his house toward the door in the rear of it, as she stumbled and groaned and blinked away her tears, she sank into a willing apathy.  They were outside in a breath and a beat of her dully aching heart, sprinting as fast as they could manage through the trees and bushes lining Sam’s backyard and the yards of his neighbors.  They ran and ran.  Her leg burned and almost failed her but it didn’t.  _There’s no other way.  No other choice.  Get it to Tony.  Keep it safe._

Part of her heart felt like it was dying.  She closed her eyes and imagined Steve, struggling to get away from SHIELD, to lead them on a chase, but eventually they would catch him.  Take him prisoner.  Drag him back to the Triskelion, to whatever Pierce would do to him to get what he wanted.  She couldn’t stand to think about it.

And she couldn’t stand to think about the Winter Soldier.  Did Pierce control him?  Would he be there?  Would he shove the barrel of his rifle into Steve’s head and force him to his knees?  She pictured those cold, empty eyes as Barnes pulled the trigger.  Would he remember?  Would it matter?

 _I should have told him.  I should have told him!_ But she hadn’t.  And now she couldn’t.  Just like that, Steve was gone again, and she’d been too damn weak to admit the truth to him.  It was too late.  She wanted to scream and cry and _hurt_ something.  She wanted to go back and force the words out.  She wanted him in her arms.  She wanted what they had had the morning she’d come home to him, easy love and laughing kisses and blissful moments together.  Peace.  She wanted…  What she wanted didn’t matter.  Steve had given her orders, and all she could do was follow them and pray with every bit of her heart and soul that she was wrong about the Winter Soldier.


	8. Chapter 8

They caught him, of course.  He didn’t fight.  He could have.  He could have killed them all if he’d wanted to.  But he didn’t.  That wasn’t who he was, and that wasn’t the point of this choice he’d made.  He knew Natasha thought he flew by the seat of his pants sometimes.  She thought he was too stubborn, impulsive, and tied to his morals.  Even he thought it.  He sure as hell hadn’t thought it through when he’d gone after her in Crimea.  Instead he’d let his heart and his instincts drive him, and he didn’t regret it one bit, even knowing how hefty a price he’d have to pay.  He’d do anything to protect innocent people, to do the right thing and fight for his country.  And he’d do anything for her, no matter the cost.

This time he had a plan, though (well, if he was honest with himself, it really wasn’t much of a plan and he’d come up with it out of desperation and terror.  Bucky had told him once that sheer panic was the foundation of any great plan.  If that was the case, this was going to be one of his best).  His plan entailed getting close enough to Pierce to throw SHIELD off of Natasha’s scent for as long as he could.  It was a risk, and he damn well knew it, but if he could distract them for a few hours, she’d have a significant head start on them.  Whatever was on that drive was too important to let SHIELD recover it.  And if he learned more about what the hell was going on, that was just as well.  However, all of that required that SHIELD capture him, so after running them around senselessly for a while, long enough, he hoped, for Natasha and Sam to get clear, he finally let them surround him.  They enclosed him, a circle of black-clad soldiers and STRIKE personnel dozens strong.  SHIELD wasn’t fooling around.  Neither was he.

Rumlow was there.  “Drop the shield, Cap,” he ordered.  He had his gun aimed at Steve’s chest.  He did, as well as every other soldier present.  Steve had no choice, even as he narrowed his eyes and swept a glare over the group.  They were out in the middle of suburbia.  It was early in the morning yet, but people were waking up and getting ready for their days.  SHIELD was willing to hold Captain America at gun point and arrest him out in public like this.  They _really_ weren’t fooling around.  “I’m not going to ask again.  Drop the shield.”

Even though this was what he’d wanted, it was damn hard to comply.  He stood still, clenching the straps of his shield harder, the moment rife with tension.  It was emboldening to see he intimidated them.  And it was disturbing to see that despite all the missions they’d done together, all the times he’d commanded their unit, they held no allegiance to him.  Just like that, they were his enemies.  _Not just like that._   It took a conscious effort to make his fingers loosen, to slide his shield from his forearm, to set it to the ground.  The second he did that, they were on him.  They patted him down in search of weapons.  They pulled his hands behind his back and marched him at to the back of a black van.  Inside that, they forced him down onto a bench and locked him into hefty restraints.  The cuffs around his wrists and ankles were too strong for him to break and electromagnetically linked together and to the van itself, securing him pretty effectively.  He bitterly wondered who at SHIELD had been charged with developing restraints strong enough to keep Captain America prisoner.  The ride to the Triskelion was silent, Rumlow, Rollins, and a few others of the STRIKE Team sitting in front of him and beside him.  Their guns were lowered but not enough for them to be construed as anything other than a reminder that he was their prisoner and struggling wasn’t an option.

A half an hour later, the convoy of SHIELD SUVs and the vans entered the Triskelion through a private area in the garage.  Rumlow and his men freed Steve from the restraints inside the van, manhandled him out, and held him there.  “Hands on your head,” the STRIKE commander ordered, and Steve complied while they readied another set of cuffs.  He didn’t struggle as they grabbed his wrists and yanked his arms none too gently behind his back again, tightly fastening the cuffs around them.  These, too, were too strong for him to break, at least not easily and not without attracting attention.

Steve kept his face calm and impassive, betraying nothing of his doubt or his mounting dread, as the men behind him finished with his bonds.  “You going to do it this time?” he asked, his voice hard with spite.

The other man glared at him.  “Do what?”

“Kill me.  You’ve tried before.  Or was that all some sort of misunderstanding?”

“You don’t know what you’re talking about.”

 _Right._ “The thing I don’t get is why even bother to save my life if you were just going to kill me later.”

Rumlow’s lips twitched in a tiny bit of an amused grin.  “I’m following orders, same as I always do.”

“I bet you are.”

“You’re not doing yourself any favors here by pissing me off,” Rumlow coolly reminded him.  “I suggest you cooperate.  Now walk.”

A few seconds later had them across the garage and in front of an elevator.  Steve didn’t recognize this place and realized with chagrin that it likely was a direct route to the upper echelons of the Triskelion where the Secretary, the Director, and other senior and key personnel worked.  It was probably meant as some sort of emergency escape, but in this case it would serve as an efficient way to transport a highly valued prisoner to the top of the building without garnering the attention of the hundreds of people working within it.  Steve didn’t know whether to be heartened or dismayed that Pierce wanted his capture kept secret.  He was forced onto the lift, completely surrounded again by the STRIKE Team, and the elevator shot upward to the sky.  Behind him, Rollins held his shield.  It was difficult to stand still like this, but he’d done it before for more frightening monsters than Rumlow and his lackeys.  He’d let himself be captured by Nazis, by the Red Skull, so this was nothing comparatively.  He forced himself to relax as the elevator climbed the Triskelion, breathing deeply to keep his heartbeat slow and his muscles loose but ready.

The elevator chirped as it reached the top floor.  The doors opened and Rumlow hooked his fingers roughly in the crook of Steve’s elbow and escorted him out.  They were walking down the gray corridor to what Steve assumed was Pierce’s office.  The entire retinue of STRIKE agents was following him; clearly they weren’t going to take any chances.

Pierce, on the other hand, was.  His face scrunched up in dismay and disgust at seeing the STRIKE Team pushing Steve toward him.  “Is this really necessary?” he said.  His eyes flicked to Rumlow, his hands set on his hips.  “Let him go.  Captain Rogers is not under arrest.”

Rumlow was too hardened to visibly be rebuked.  “Sir, he resisted–”

“And you would have done the same in his position,” Pierce said.  He hardly spared Rumlow a glance, keeping his gaze on Steve.  His weathered face was tight with disapproval.  “I think there’s been a hell of a misunderstanding here, one I want cleared up.  Let him free so we can have a civil discussion.  I think everyone is entitled to that.”

Rumlow hesitated a moment more, darting angry eyes between Pierce and Steve.  Steve couldn’t tell if Rumlow’s indignation was an act or genuine.  It could have been for show.  Steve wasn’t as good at reading people as Natasha was, but he wasn’t naïve.  It would make sense for Pierce to play him, try to turn him or manipulate him into revealing something he shouldn’t by appearing to be his ally or at least sympathetic.  Steve was willing to go along with it.  This really wasn’t his style, but he was becoming more and more aware that his style wasn’t at all congruent with what SHIELD was all about.  As Rumlow begrudgingly moved to unlock the cuffs, he hoped he could pull it off.  Lying was not his strong suit.  “I’d like my shield back,” he said, rubbing his newly freed wrists.

Rollins seemed to be doing his damnedest to not glower and failed magnificently.  Pierce’s gaze was focused on Steve, but he was stern but otherwise unreadable.  It was almost as if they were engaged in some sort of silent negotiation.  “Give him his shield.”  The tense displeasure in the air grew even more uncomfortable, and Rollins stared menacingly at Steve, probably remembering with disdain the way Steve had confronted him aboard the quinjet in Russia when he’d been threatening Natasha.  But he, too, acquiesced and handed Steve his shield back.  Pierce nodded.  “You’re all dismissed.”

Rumlow was quick to object.  “Sir, this is against regulations.  He should be under armed guard, and with Director Fury–”

“Regulations be damned.  If Captain America has become an enemy of SHIELD, then the world has truly gone to hell.  Dismissed.”

Rumlow’s eye twitched.  “Yes, sir.”  He gave Steve one last scowl before turning and leading his men back down the hall.  “STRIKE, move out.”

Pierce watched them go, his face tight with unhappiness.  Then he seemed to sag slightly, perhaps in weariness and grief, but mostly, it seemed, in frustration.  His voice abandoned its hard edge.  “Please come in.”  Steve hesitated a moment, not wanting to seem too trusting (and, honestly, not feeling very trusting), before stepping inside Pierce’s spacious office.  Like everything else in the Triskelion, it was gray, chrome, and silver, sleekly and minimally furnished.  The wide expanse of windows displayed a gloomy and drizzly day.  A long conference table filled one side, all of the black chairs empty.  There was also a huge computer display along one wall, a thin piece of glass that was loaded with scrolling data, reports, and information from SHIELD’s mainframe.  “Unless you want to go down to medical first,” Pierce said, still standing by the door.  “You look banged up.”

“No, it’s fine,” Steve said.  After a beat, he added, “Sir.”

“Something to drink then?”

“No, thank you, sir.”

“Then have a seat.”  Pierce gestured to an uncomfortable but expensive looking leather couch along a coffee table.  Steve lowered himself to it, ignoring every pang of his aching body and propping his shield against the side of it.  Pierce came over, unbuttoning his gray suit jacket and setting it to the back of the adjacent chair before sitting himself.  “First, I want you to know that I’m sorry about all of this.  It’s been a confusing few days.”  Steve nodded.  Pierce sighed, shaking his head.  “I hope you can understand why I had to bring you in.  Nick Fury was my friend, and I want to make sure justice is done.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We’ve been friends for years, back to when I was at the State Department in Bogota.  Here.”  He reached inside an old-fashioned manila folder, one of many strewn about the table, and handed Steve a couple of photographs.  “That was taken about five years later.  Right from the beginning, I knew Nick was a ruthless son of a bitch.  But I also knew he was the best man possible to defend world security.  He ever tell you about how we met?”

“No.”

“ELN rebels took the US Embassy there in Bogota.  Security got me out, but the rebels took hostages.  Nick was deputy chief of the SHIELD station in Colombia at the time, and he comes to me with a plan.  He wants to storm the building through the sewers.  He wants to get the people out and put down the rebels in one, decisive strike.  I said no.  We’ll negotiate, try the diplomatic route.  As it turned out, the ELN didn’t negotiate so they put out a kill order on our people.  They go to murder the hostages in the basement, and what do they find?  They find it empty.  Nick had ignored my direct order and carried out an unauthorized military operation on foreign soil.”  Pierce smiled faintly.  “You know something about making the tough choices like that, Captain.”

Steve leaned back slightly, looking down on the photograph of Fury.  He was young, untroubled.  Less weary and burdened.  Steve had never seen an image of him before he’d lost his eye.  It was a stark reminder that he hadn’t known Fury all that well.  It was also a blatant indication of how much running SHIELD and facing the worst of the world’s evil had changed Fury.  “Nick saved the lives of a dozen political officers that day, including my daughter.”  Pierce looked saddened.  “He had the guts to do what was right, even when it wasn’t convenient or easy.”

“So you made him head of SHIELD.”

“I’ve never had any cause to regret it until now.”  The older man narrowed his gaze, scrutinizing Steve carefully.  For his own part, Steve kept his face emotionless as he set the pictures down on the coffee table.  “Captain, what were you doing in Algiers?  It’s been my assumption that Nick sent you there, but I would like to know why.”

He would have to be careful with his answer.  He didn’t trust Pierce, but honestly, he wasn’t sure he trusted what Fury had told him, either.  “He thought SHIELD might be compromised, that a traitor might have had dealings with some pirates there.  He wanted me to find out what was going on.”

“Were you aware that Agent Sitwell had been sent to the _Lemurian Star_?”

Steve wasn’t sure how Pierce could know that unless he had been the one to send him.  His eyes must have betrayed his uncertainty, because Pierce settled back in his chair and pressed a small button on a remote control.  The display behind them came to life with a grainy video of the docks.  Steve recognized the scene well enough.  He was arguing with Sitwell, getting shot by Sitwell, and then forcing Sitwell down.  Pierce sighed slowly.  “I know you didn’t kill him, Captain, but what I don’t know is who did and why.”

“If you knew I didn’t do it, why make people think I did?” Steve asked.  He couldn’t keep his suspicions from coloring his tone.

Pierce had the decency to look ashamed.  “It’s difficult to orchestrate a manhunt for Captain America without getting the troops rallied behind it.”  Steve bristled inwardly but said nothing to that.  He watched as the video played on, depicting in blurry detail the bullets from afar ripping through Sitwell’s chest and Steve trying to pull him to safety.  The footage ended with Steve covering Sitwell’s body beside the crashed SUV, before the Winter Soldier had come onto the scene.  That seemed rather convenient.  Pierce set the remote to the table.  “I’m hoping you can shed some light on this situation.  Two high-ranking SHIELD officers are dead.”

“Fury didn’t say anything to me about Sitwell being there,” Steve conceded.

“I sent him there,” Pierce said.

That wasn’t surprising.  “Why?”

“He was there on official business.  The _Lemurian Star_ was a front for covert SHIELD operations.  WorldCom is a legitimate SHIELD contractor.”  Another tap of Pierce’s index finger to the remote filled the screen with thousands of files and documents detailing SHIELD’s dealings with WorldCom.  The company obviously had a long-standing relationship with SHIELD, back into the 1960s if the list flying by was any indication.  Some files even seemed to concern WorldCom’s relationship with Stark Industries; Howard Stark’s signature adorned the bottom of many of the documents.  “They’ve been working with us since SHIELD was founded.  The company was created as an offshoot of Operation: Paperclip after World War II.  As SHIELD began to absorb information and personnel from the Nazis and other dangerous world regimes, we realized that we needed a safe place to store sensitive resources.”  Pierce cocked his head slightly.  “And that we needed to distance ourselves from the fact we were tapping some less than reputable sources to get ahead of the game.  WorldCom has been a repository for SHIELD R &D since its inception.”

“Sounds like you were keeping things hidden, not safe,” Steve said.

“Don’t be naïve.  In our line of work, where the secrets of your secrets can mean the difference between war or peace, hidden and safe are rarely mutually exclusive.”  Pierce tapped the remote control again.  “The pirates you disabled weren’t pirates at all, but ex-SHIELD and ex-DGSE officers who took a vow of silence as to their mission.  And their mission was a simple one: keep the data aboard the _Lemurian Star_ away from those who would abuse it.  Part of that was keeping up a façade that they had nothing to do with SHIELD.  Sometimes the best place to hide something is right under your enemy’s nose.”

“Why go through all this trouble?  What were they protecting?”

Pierce looked displeased.  “Nick was right about one thing: SHIELD was… maybe still is compromised.”

“By what?”

The other man released a long, slow breath.  “It’s difficult for me to think this, let alone say it, but I can’t deny it.  Not any longer.  Not with the Council breathing down my neck.  I’m afraid that Fury was a traitor.”

That was a bold statement.  Obviously Pierce was saying it to get a rise out of him, to judge his reaction.  Obviously it was a lie.  _But what if it isn’t?_   Steve didn’t know what to say, so he didn’t say anything to that.  Pierce was waiting for him to speak, but if his silence aggravated or disappointed the other man, he didn’t show it.  Instead he slumped slightly and shook his head.  “It seems he used you, Captain.  He sent you out to the _Lemurian Star_ under false pretenses.  He knew you could infiltrate and extract what he wanted.  He sent the world’s best soldier out there to make sure it got done.”

“Why?”

“The prevailing theory?  He was selling classified SHIELD R&D to some very bad people, R&D that was safely housed aboard the _Lemurian Star_ and protected by Georges Batroc.  The sale went sour, and that led to Nick’s death.”

Steve paused for a moment, his mind racing through this scenario.  Could it be possible?  His gut said no, but his mind wasn’t so convinced.  “If you really knew Nick Fury, then you’d know that’s not true.”

Pierce’s face softened in grief.  “Don’t you think I want to believe that?  I wish I could.  The Council has been suspecting Nick of something like this for some time, and I kept defending him.”  He stood, jabbing his hands in his pockets as he walked away.  “I kept telling them it couldn’t be possible.  Nick Fury was a hero, not a traitor.  But I can’t keep denying it.  That’s why I want to talk to you.  If he said anything to you about his motives, I want to know.  I want to exonerate him if I can.”

“He told me he couldn’t say anything more than what he did,” Steve answered.

“And what was that?”

“That SHIELD might be compromised,” Steve said again.  “He thought whatever was aboard the _Lemurian Star_ might be evidence of it.”  He wouldn’t reveal more than that, not about Rumlow or Fury’s suspicions that the STRIKE Team had tried to have him killed.  Not when he was fairly certain the STRIKE Team was allied with Pierce. 

“That’s not proof of anything,” Pierce said.  A mixture of disappointment and irritation colored his voice.

“What proof do you have that he betrayed you?”

“He lied to me.  And he lied to you.  Did you know he bugged your apartment?”  Steve raised his chin and fought to keep the surprise from his face.  That was a low blow, even if it was true.  “Did you know he had another agent spying on you, posing as your neighbor?  He’s _been_ lying to you, Captain, ever since he first approached you about the Avengers Initiative.  He lied to you about sending Stark into Stuttgart during the Loki incident.  He lied to you about Phase Two.  He lied to you about Phil Coulson.”  That did strike home, and it struck hard.  Steve averted his gaze, rising from the couch and planting his hands on his hips as he turned away.  Pierce went on.  “He lied to you about your mission into Crimea, a mission which, by the way, nearly cost you your life.  He lied to you about Sitwell’s role in Algiers.  He’s been trying to tie you to him to keep you blinded to the truth.  He did the same to me.  What’s that old saying?  Keep your friends close but your enemies closer.”

The silence that came was heavy.  Steve couldn’t believe this.  He’d never trusted Fury, not really, but if this was true, it heralded a level of deception and betrayal that he could hardly fathom.  Pierce’s tone softened as though in sympathy.  “I know it’s disturbing.  Damn upsetting, if I want to be honest with myself.  But he wasn’t who we thought he was.  That’s becoming more and more obvious to me.  He lied to _everyone._ ”  Steve sighed slowly, trying to regain his composure as he stared at the other side of the room.  “He betrayed you.  He betrayed me.  He betrayed all of SHIELD.  And now he’s dead, killed by the same man who shot Sitwell and who’s chasing you down.  Obviously Nick’s buyers are looking for what he sold them, and they think you have it.  Do you?”

He wasn’t going to answer that.  “What’s Project: Insight?”

Pierce turned and cocked an eyebrow.  “How do you know about that?”

“Does it matter, sir?  What is it?”

Pierce was displeased again.  He walked slowly to his desk.  “Project: Insight is the next step in SHIELD’s war on terror and evil.  After the Battle of New York, the Council decided to go forward with a long-term, precision plan to eliminate hostile threats across the globe.  It’s been in top secret development since then.  It will launch soon, if the Council has its say.  Nick was trying to delay it, though he wouldn’t tell me why.  It would make sense if he was trying to sell sensitive intel about it.”  He tipped his head back to Steve.  “The _Lemurian Star_ was performing key satellite launching and testing operations for Project: Insight.  The data Fury sent you to retrieve has something to do with that.  Something vitally important to it.”  He smiled weakly.  “Sorry.  I’d like to tell you more, but you don’t have high enough security clearance.”

Pierce was lying.  Sitwell had obviously known about Project: Insight, and his clearance had been lower than Steve’s was.  Still, Steve didn’t reveal that he knew that.  If Pierce was corrupt, the only leverage he had in this situation was that conversation he’d had with Sitwell before the agent had been shot and the data he’d brought back from the _Lemurian Star_ , neither of which he was interested in giving up _._ “Captain,” Pierce began, drifting toward the window behind his desk.  He leaned against it, gazing darkly outside.  “I wasn’t lying to you.  No matter what else Nick Fury was, there was a time when he was my friend.  We both knew that no matter the diplomacy and the hand-shaking and the rhetoric, building a better world sometimes meant having to tear the old one down.  I don’t know what made Nick do what he did, what could have possibly driven him to betray everything he believed in like this.  Money?  Unimportant to him.  Power?  He had everything he could have wanted right here.  That doesn’t leave much else but fear.  The people who could frighten a man like Nick…  Those can only be the worst sort of evil the world can muster, and the world can muster some terrible things.  Those people could have gotten their hands on resources that would have tipped the balance of power toward our enemies.”  He shook his head and turned to look at Steve.  “Our common enemies.  War.  Chaos.  Anarchy.  That’s why you went after General Brushov like you did, why you crashed a plane full of bombs into the Arctic to save our country seventy years ago.  You _know_ how dark and dangerous things really are.”

Steve didn’t argue with that.  “And the fact that our enemies, whoever they are, got their hands into our organization, got their hands into our leader, makes me really angry.”  Pierce dropped his arm from the window.  “So I need to ask you again.  Do you have the data from the _Lemurian Star_?”  The question was calm, softly spoken.  It was difficult to read through the words.  Was there a threat behind them, a threat of what would happen to him if he didn’t hand over what he had and said everything he knew?  Or was this simply something spoken by a man desperately trying to make heads or tails of a bad situation in order to keep it from becoming worse?  “I want to be very clear.  You have an obligation as an agent of SHIELD to turn in that data.  It’s the only copy of it that there is.  If you’ve lost it or it’s fallen into the hands of the enemies…”

“I have it.”

Honestly, Steve didn’t know why he expected a reaction.  There wasn’t one.  Perhaps Pierce wasn’t a spy, but he hadn’t gotten to be in such a powerful position as the Secretary of Defense and a member of the World Security Council by being easy to read or anticipate.  Steve dropped his gaze, releasing a long breath.  “Nick told me not to give it to anyone but him.”

Pierce nodded.  He walked around his desk to stand in front of Steve.  “I know.  But I need you to give it to me.”

Steve slid his hand into the pocket of his jeans.  The USB drive was in there.  The _other_ USB drive.  The one Fury had given him to use to copy the data from the _Lemurian Star._   The two drives had been so similar that he was willing to bet Pierce wouldn’t be able to tell the difference.  But he wasn’t about to hand it over without some concessions on Pierce’s part.  That was part of the reason he’d done this.  “If I hand this over, I want your assurance that you’ll call off any hunt you’re conducting for Agent Romanoff.”

“Agent Romanoff has never interested me,” Pierce replied.  He seemed angered at Steve’s negotiation.

 _Sure, she hasn’t._   “With all due respect, sir, don’t play me for a fool.  If you were trying to get me, you were trying to get her.”  Pierce didn’t so much as blink.  “She wants out of DC.  After losing Nick, she needs time to be alone and regroup.  Let her go.”

“This isn’t some sort of hostage negotiation.  Romanoff is AWOL, and she’s an asset we can’t afford to lose right now.”

“You want me to trust you, sir.  Call it a token of good faith.”  Steve pulled his hand free of his pocket and held it out slightly, unfurling his fingers to reveal the silver USB drive resting on his palm.

Pierce stared at the drive for a moment, his eyes flicking from the SHIELD emblem on the side of the small device to Steve’s deadpan expression.  “I have to admit I didn’t expect this from you.  You’d weigh national, even global, security on my promise to leave Agent Romanoff alone?”

 _What surprises you more?_ Steve bitterly wondered.  _That I’d do that or that I don’t trust you not to hurt her?_ “Please, sir,” he said in a weary voice.  That wasn’t too hard to muster at least.  “I just want to make sure she doesn’t get dragged back into this before she’s ready.  Director Fury meant a lot to her.  It’ll kill her to learn he betrayed her.  She’s hurting.”

Pierce’s face softened.  He reached out his hand.  “Aren’t we all.  You have my word.  She can come back when she’s ready.  And you don’t need to do anything more than this.  You’ve been through enough.”

Steve hesitated a moment more, or rather made a show of hesitating.  Mostly his mind was racing.  The minute he gave Pierce that drive, he was committed.  He had no idea how much time he would have before Pierce actually checked the contents of the device and found it empty.  With any luck, he’d bought Natasha and Sam a few hours.  And with any luck, he’d be long gone.

Steeling himself, he slipped the USB drive into Pierce’s hand.  The Secretary seemed the tiniest bit surprised and relieved.  “Thank you, Captain.  I appreciate it.  I realize it’s not easy to trust, especially in this business.”

“No, sir,” he agreed, “it’s not.”

Pierce nodded.  He laid a friendly hand on the center of Steve’s back and turned him toward the door.  Steve bent to grab his shield.  “I’m going to have someone escort you to the medical bay.  Then you go and get cleaned up and find something to eat.  And rest.”  He smiled, but Steve couldn’t help but feel like he was being brushed off.  That was fine with him.  All he wanted to do now was find Clint and get the hell out of there.  Pierce stopped him by the door and grasped his hand, shaking it firmly.  “Those are orders by the way, Captain.  I’m going to need you in the coming days to help hunt down whoever murdered Agent Sitwell and Director Fury.  We’ll talk more later this afternoon.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Agent Carter’s waiting outside.  She’ll take you down.”

Steve’s mouth came open in shock before he managed to get a hold of himself.  Kate – Agent Thirteen – Agent _Carter_ – was there in the hallway.  She’d changed from the civilian clothes she’d had on earlier that morning, now sporting a chic, gray pantsuit with a light blue blouse beneath.  She looked entirely different from the sweet girl who needed help moving her furniture and brought him coffee and flirted with him on occasion.  This girl was poised and professional, her honeyed curls framing her pretty face that seemed just a bit haggard and uncomfortable.  Steve couldn’t help but stare.  _Agent Carter_.  _Sharon._   Peggy’s niece (grandniece, really, but _still_ ) had been living across the hall from him for months and he’d never noticed.  Now that he looked more carefully, now that he _knew_ , he thought he could see just a bit of Peggy in her eyes.  Just a touch of the way Peggy had always carried herself.  He didn’t know whether to be angry or ashamed.  He settled on angry.  “Captain,” she said softly in greeting, lowering her gaze.

“I don’t need an escort,” he snapped as he walked by her down the corridor.

“You don’t have a choice.  I have orders.”

“That seems to be a common excuse around here lately,” Steve coldly replied.  Still, she wasn’t dissuaded by the ice in his tone.  She fell in step with him, even as he quickened his pace away from Pierce’s office.  They were at the elevator in a matter of seconds.  Steve’s heart pounded, tight with such a storm of emotions that he couldn’t even begin to separate them.  Still, his ire won out.  “Why didn’t you tell me?  Don’t tell me you didn’t know about what Peggy and I–”

“I knew,” she said quietly, harshly.  “Why do you think I was chosen for this detail?”

That only threw fuel on the fire.  The lift arrived, and Steve hardly waited for the doors to slide open before charging inside.  She followed.  “What, so you could use it against me if you needed to?  Blind-side me with your ace in the hole if it turned out that spying on me wasn’t enough to get what SHIELD wanted?”

Carter’s face hardened and her tone was clipped and curt.  “Medical bay,” she ordered the computer once it had registered their identities.

“Ignore that,” Steve snapped.  “Where’s Agent Barton?”

The computer processed for a split second, likely using the Triskelion’s slew of biometric scanners to approximate Clint’s location.  “Agent Barton was last detected entering the lobby.”

“Take us there,” Steve ordered.  To hell with hiding his intentions.  Anxiety coiled in the pit of his stomach.  He had a feeling that if he didn’t make a move to escape now, he wasn’t going to be able to, and he needed to escape.

“No,” Carter hotly said.  She darted a glance at him from the corner of her eye as if she was daring him to challenge her again.  “Medical bay.”

“Medical bay, confirmed.”

The elevator immediately began to move, small drops of rain caressing the windows as they descended from the top of the Triskelion.  “Where the hell do you get off?” Steve snapped, flustered enough to abandon trying to control the lift’s destination for now.  “How much of what I’ve said and done have you reported back, huh?  Everything?”

“Nothing.”

“You’re a damn poor liar!”

“You have no idea what I am.”

“A wolf in sheep’s clothing comes to mind.”

“I’m not lying.”  Carter’s jaw tightened.  She folded her arms across her chest, standing as far from Steve as possible.  Steve clenched and unclenched his fists as his side, glaring at her unabashedly.  He was darkly beginning to wonder if there was anyone left to betray him today.  “I wasn’t spying on you.  I was there to protect you.”

“On whose orders?”

“Fury’s,” she coolly responded, every bit as incensed as he was.  Steve’s eyes widened slightly, and his anger was tempered by surprise.  He’d been lied to a lot recently, but for some reason when he looked into Carter’s eyes, he knew she was telling the truth.  Peggy had never been anything but honest with him from the moment they’d met, brutally so at times, and Sharon’s expression reminded him so much of her.  Carter deflated a bit, though not enough to shed her anger.  “He asked me to make certain you were safe, and that’s what I did.”

The spite came back hard and fast.  “By lying to my face every time we spoke?” he returned.  “By ratting us out back there?”

“I saw the assassin who’s trying to kill you,” she said.  “Who do you think made him run yesterday when you were fighting him?  You’re better off here.  And if I was really as heartless as you think, I would’ve turned you in last night.”

“Why didn’t you?”

Carter’s mouth fell open.  But before she could manage an answer, the elevator came to a stop halfway down the tower.  The doors opened to reveal Rumlow, Rollins, and the rest of the STRIKE Team.  Steve stepped back, bringing his shield up to bear.  He supposed he should have been shocked, but he wasn’t.  Carter was, though.  She dropped her arms from her chest, eyeing the company of armed soldiers in alarm.  “What is this?”

Rumlow glared at Steve.  “Out, Carter.”

“What’s going on?” she demanded again, moving just a bit closer to Steve.  Everyone noticed it.

“Get the fuck out of the elevator, agent,” Rumlow responded, his words slow and exaggerated so there could be no mistake.  “Unless you want to go down with him.”

Carter’s face darkened even further, but she still didn’t move.  “Our orders were to escort Captain Rogers to medical,” she said.

“Your orders were,” Rumlow corrected.  “Mine are to make sure he dies, right here and right now.  Last chance to bow out.”  He didn’t give her much.  A second, really.  Then he sneered and drew a stun baton from his belt.  “Suit yourself.”

The STRIKE Team charged.  Carter reached for her gun, but it was kicked from her hand before she even had a chance to thumb its safety off.  She was overwhelmed instantly by Rollins and another Steve didn’t know, the two men shoving her to the back left corner of the lift.  All of the rest of them went straight for Steve.  He kicked out at one, catching him in the chest and knocking him back into the group, but there were too many and there wasn’t enough room to maneuver.  Steve gritted his teeth as a stun baton snapped down across his back.  The pain was excruciating, a rippling tide of current across his skin and muscles that infiltrated and seemingly burned his bones.  He knew right away they had the batons set to an unsafe level for a normal person, firing with enough voltage to be lethal.  But that thought was fleeting under the debilitating agony, and all he could do for a moment was fight to get his lungs to stop seizing before snapping out his fist and catching whoever was holding the baton against him.  The man cried out, smashing into one of the rear windows of the elevator car and nearly breaking it.

Steve tried to stand once the pain was gone, but it was too late.  With the entirety of the STRIKE Team bearing down on him, he could barely get his feet beneath him before they wrenched his shield away and pushed and shoved him to the front of the elevator.  A particularly burly guy wrapped a huge, beefy arm around Steve’s neck while Rumlow and the others tried to reattach the cuffs to his wrists.  There were so many arms around him and hands on him.  He went rigid, fighting with all of his strength, as Rumlow successfully got one of the cuffs around his left wrist and activated it.  Steve growled as the incredibly potent magnetic force tried to drag his hand up to the metal surrounding the elevator door.  Added to that was the strength of everyone around him as they grabbed him and tried to push him back.  If that cuff made contact with the door frame…

It didn’t.  Steve gave a hoarse cry, yanking his arm down.  He landed his elbow into the midriff of the man holding him from behind, and that was enough to loosen the choking grasp around his neck.  He moved fast, faster than they did, twisting his hand around and snapping the arm of one of the men trying to restrain him.  He squirmed, trying to keep them from cuffing his other wrist, lashing out with one foot and cracking a man’s jaw.  The agent was holding the second cuff, and it flew to the side wall of the elevator and stuck there.  Steve lashed out again, his elbow driving into another man’s face and knocking him down, before using the man behind him as leverage to jump up.  A split kick drove two more back, each crumpling, but as they were hitting the floor he’d already fisted the shirt of the man behind him and hauled him over his shoulder like he didn’t weigh hundreds of pounds.  The whole elevator shook as the hefty mass landed on top of the other men.

Steve heard Sharon cry out, and that was enough to distract him for a second.  Rumlow kicked at his careening fist and knocked his cuffed hand back just enough for the magnetic force to grab him.  It took him by surprise, pulling his wrist right to the door frame.  Panic burst over him for a split second, and that was all he had before Rumlow was on him, the stun baton cracking with energy.  The first strike he blocked, but the next he couldn’t and the baton was rammed into his side.  Steve howled in pain, trying to hang onto consciousness.  Rumlow was hideous as he pressed the baton deeper, jolting Steve’s helpless body.  Steve twisted, fighting for breath, fighting to keep his wits under the torture, and snatched the baton against him with his free hand.  A twist of his fingers had Rumlow stumbling away, and Steve landed a fierce kick in the agent’s stomach.  He flew back, cracking the window of the elevator again when he struck it. 

Steve turned.  One of the remaining men drove another stun baton at him.  He caught the blow and pushed it off course to hit another of the agents.  The man jolted unnaturally before collapsing.  Another tried to pin him, but Steve kicked him back.  He turned and jumped, bracing his boots a few feet up against the wall.  He grabbed his trapped hand around the wrist and pulled as hard as he could, shaking from the effort.  _Come on._   He could feel the electromagnetic force weaken as he put more and more of his strength into it, his body throbbing in desperation.  _Come on.  Come on!_

Finally it gave.  He flipped and landed on the floor of the elevator with a thud.  The remaining SHIELD agents were on him, but their eyes were wide with terror and a dawning realization that they weren’t going to win this fight.  Their faces were bathed in sweat, their punches and kicks thrown sloppily, and Steve expertly dodged and countered.  A second later, they were all down.

All except Rumlow and Rollins, and Rollins had his hand in Sharon’s hair and her down on her knees.  Steve rose to his full height, breathing heavily and glaring at Rumlow.  “Whoa, big guy,” breathed Rumlow.  He held his hand out as though to appease Steve.  He still held two stun batons, one in either hand.  He tipped his head a little, panting himself, and said, “I just want you to know, Cap.  None of this has ever been personal!”  He charged with that, stabbing the stun baton at Steve.  Steve caught the first blow on his forearm, pushing the crackling stick away from his body, but Rumlow was quick to jab the second baton into his stomach.  Pain exploded from his abdomen up his chest and down to his groin, and he nearly collapsed from its intensity.  Rumlow held it there, letting the electricity jolt through Steve’s hapless form until Steve finally overcame it enough to drive a punch at Rumlow.  The pain was serious enough that his blow wasn’t as strong or well-aimed as it could have been, and Rumlow batted it away.  That lifted the stun baton from his body for a blessed second at least, but the STRIKE commander was quick to hit him with it again, this time higher up on his rib cage.  Steve screamed in pain, his heart laboring under the shock.  It took all of his strength, but he grabbed Rumlow under his arms and flung him up into the top of the elevator.  The agent hit hard, cracking the ceiling above them, before falling heavily back down onto the floor.

Steve stared down on his unmoving form, fighting to catch his breath.  Then he looked at Carter, but she’d taken care of Rollins on her own during all of that, her gun pointed at his scrunched up form at her feet.  The two of them were the only ones standing, dozens of bodies strewn about them.  “You okay?”

She nodded, her eyes wide with surprise and fear.  She had a bruise along her jaw; Steve couldn’t remember if that had been there before.  “What the hell is happening?” she asked softly.

There was no time to explain.  Steve slammed his boot down on his shield where it had been dropped, and it spun upward and onto his arm.  He rammed it against the cuff around his wrist, cutting it away.  Then he stepped over the mess of bodies to the elevator door, wondering for a second if it would be better to try and take the elevator down or to chance the stairs.  He didn’t have to wonder long.  Down the hall another company of soldiers appeared, guns raised and aimed at him.  “Rogers!  Hands in the air!”

Steve jerked back in surprise.  “Hang on!” he said to Sharon, and he whirled, bringing the sharp edge of his shield up in the spin.  He sliced through the glass on the side of the elevator and its cables.  The elevator dropped like a rock, screaming as it descended rapidly.  Steve ducked against the corner, watching as Sharon gasped but did the same.  A dozen floors flew by in a breath.  The emergency brakes kicked in, stopping the elevator with a violent, abrupt jerk and loud squeal. 

Steve caught his breath and quickly regained his footing, stepping to the door.  Carter was pale but otherwise seemed unharmed.  She shakily joined Steve at the open elevator doors.  They were in between floors, too high for Carter to climb but he could lift her out.  Steve was about to do that when he heard the thunder of boots coming down the hall beyond.  _Damn it._   He grabbed the elevator door and pulled it closed one-handed.

Carter shook her head, moving away.  She lifted her gun, watching with wide, confused eyes as Steve moved to the side of the elevator that overlooked the Potomac and the lower sections of the Triskelion.  He grasped the railing, realizing with dread that this was his only way.  The lobby was still maybe a hundred feet below.  The fall would be fatal for anyone else.  “You’re not going to…”

“No choice,” Steve responded.

“Give it up, Rogers!  You’ve got nowhere to go!” came a furious shout from outside.

Steve took a step away from the window, steadying himself.  “Captain, don’t do this,” Sharon said.  Her hand clenched tighter around her gun like part of her wanted to force him to stop.  Maybe she would.  Clearly she had had no idea how deep the corruption inside SHIELD ran.  Steve ignored her, adjusting the straps of his shield to ensure he had a good grip.  His shield was all he had to save his life right now.  “Captain.  _Steve._ I’m sure there’s some explanation–”

He ran.  The window burst when he collided with it, and then he was falling, sailing through the warm, rainy air with a spray of glass surrounding him.  Steve’s heart seemed to be stopped in his chest as he put his shield beneath him and curled himself behind it.  A breath later he slammed through the glass roof of the lobby.  Vaguely he heard people screaming and things shattering, but it was distant, drowned out by the rush of air.  He hit the ground hard.  The killing force of the collision was mostly absorbed by his shield, but enough got through to send hot bolts of agony jabbing through his left arm and side.  For a moment he could only lay there, broken and pulverized glass drizzling down around him.  The pain was too excruciating to overcome, and it took a great deal of effort to suck a breath in through his gritted teeth.  _Get up._ The vertigo was too much, and he rolled gingerly onto his belly, scrambling to get his knees under him.  _Get up!_

_Go!_

He did.  His first steps were wobbly, and he staggered, half bent around his pulsing midsection.  People were running away from him, and an alarm started blaring.  Steve ground his teeth together, feeling something warm and slick leaking down his left side that he ignored as he sprinted across the wide expanse of the lobby.  _The garage.  Get to the garage._   There he could steal a car and get to the bridge, get across the Potomac and out of SHIELD’s grasp.  The exit from the lobby to the garage was ahead of him now.  He could reach it.  He would.  He’d get out of there.  Escape and find Natasha.  Hopefully he’d bought her a couple of hours at least.  Hopefully the data was safe.  They could come back for Clint.  They would have to.  They would–

A loud _crack_ resounded through the lobby, and agony exploded through his left leg.  Steve went down hard, the bullet tearing through his knee, breaking bone and cutting flesh.  Suddenly he was back _there_ , on Brushov’s ship with the Red Guardian pummeling him like a madman.  His mind slipped from his control as he fell, a million unwanted memories bombarding him.  Blood and fire.  Death.  _Natasha._ The gun against his chest, her cold lips and icy eyes, and the pain.  So much pain.  He fought it off but only just, and when he came back to himself, he’d lost whatever precious time he might have had to escape.

Steve turned and glanced behind him to the place from where the shot had come.  He expected to see the Winter Soldier’s shining metal arm, a long and deadly rifle tight in his hands, but he wasn’t there.  SHIELD sharpshooters were moving along the walkway of second floor on the other side of the lobby.  He didn’t have the time to look more carefully.  They were coming.  He pulled his hands away from the bloody mess, scrambling for purchase against the floor to push himself up.  His left leg was done for; he couldn’t begin to bend it or put his weight on it, and when he realized that, he fell again.  _Get up.  Come on!_   _Run!_   He couldn’t, not fast enough.  The sound of boots on the marble floor was thunderous.  “On your knees!  _On your knees!_ ”

Steve spun, bringing his shield to bear, but there were dozens of soldiers surrounding him.  Dozens.  He could have fought them all perhaps, but not with a lamed leg and not without risking his life.  And maybe he would have done that in the past.  But he thought of Natasha, of the pain and devastation she’d feel at his death, at his senseless sacrifice.  And he was furious with himself, with how goddamn _stupid_ he’d been to think he could trust SHIELD enough to put himself in its hands.  He should have known better.  He should have known better!

He knew better than to fight now.  He was dropping his shield before he even thought to do it.  And the minute he did, they were on him.  He was down on his knees again, his hands on his head, more guns than he cared to count aimed at his defeated form.  They were patting him down and grabbing his arms and wrenching them behind his back.  They were shoving him lower to the floor with their knees and boots and hands, cuffing him again.  And then they were hauling him up and making him walk, even as he limped and nearly lost his balance.  People were staring.  SHIELD agents.  Techs.  Visitors and businessmen and politicians.  People were standing, pale and shocked and doing _nothing_ , as Captain America was taken prisoner and dragged unceremoniously back into the depths of the Triskelion.

This time Steve fought.  And this time he was afraid.

* * *

They took him down to the detention level.  Even though it was buried beneath the Triskelion, it was well-lit and as immaculately clean as the rest of the building.  Still, it felt undeniably dark and forbidding, every bit like a prison.  And even though they passed people on their way down, the complete apathy persisted.  Nobody stopped.  Nobody looked twice, even as Steve struggled as he walked and dripped a bloody path behind him, even as the guards hit him and dragged him and threatened him.  Nobody helped.  Nobody did anything.  SHIELD was compromised.  _SHIELD was compromised._

The guards (Steve was at least slightly relieved that they were still intimidated enough by him to have an entire company dedicated to keeping him captive) pushed him deeper into the detention block.  There was a security checkpoint ahead manned by a few agents, and Steve entertained a momentary hope that these men would do something to stop this, but they didn’t.  They only silently admitted the retinue of guards through the doors without logging their entrance.  It was almost like they were expecting him, and not just as a prisoner.  As a prisoner who was meant to be kept a secret.

Beyond the doors and down the hall, Rumlow and the rest of the STRIKE Team were waiting.  They were all bruised, beaten, and enraged.  Rollins and Ramirez stalked forward to grab Steve’s arms, hauling him roughly away from the other soldiers and toward their own.  Rumlow was grinding his teeth hard enough for his jaw to flex as Steve was stopped in front of him.  He didn’t hold back, ramming his fist into Steve’s cheek.  Before Steve even had a second to recover from the blow, the STRIKE commander kicked his wounded knee.  He couldn’t restrain his hoarse cry of agony at that, slumping down in the others’ holds.  Rumlow smiled wanly, towering over him and panting like this excited him.  It probably did, the sadistic bastard.  “The first of many, Cap,” he snarled.

Steve struggled to hang onto consciousness, the pain in his leg nearly overwhelming his hold on awareness.  His knee utterly refused to bear his weight, and Rollins and Ramirez ended up dragging him after Rumlow.  He swallowed down the unpleasantness of nausea and dizziness and fought for some semblance of his normal composure because he sure as hell wasn’t going to surrender that easy.  He managed to straighten to more or less his full height, limping still but fixing his gait slightly to not put so much weight on his bad leg.  He squared his shoulders and lifted his chin.  He was not going down without a fight.  _Never._

They seemed to walk forever through the detention block, past offices and interrogation rooms and cells, until they reached a place that was deeper in the interior, away from the traffic that could have been in the less secure areas.  Obviously they didn’t want to be interrupted.  That didn’t bode well.  They stopped outside one cell, a large one equipped with a sizeable glass observation window, and Steve felt his heart drop into his stomach.  “Should have figured you’d be into this,” he said, trying to force some bravado into his voice.

“What did you expect?” Rumlow asked.  “Us to grovel at your feet and beg for your forgiveness?  For your approval?”  He tapped a code into the keypad by the door and pressed his palm to the scanner.  The door’s locks disengaged and its seal was released with a hydraulic hiss.  Rumlow pushed it open and Steve was shoved inside, nearly colliding with the chains and cuffs hanging from the ceiling.  Steve righted himself, turning and working with renewed fervor at breaking free.  Nothing gave, but he didn’t stop.  He stood defiantly, not caring one bit if Rumlow saw him struggle.  Rumlow’s bruised face broke in an amused scowl.  “Fuck you, Rogers.  You can beg at mine.”

“Not happening,” Steve snapped.  “I thought you said this wasn’t personal.”

“I lied.  I can’t stand anyone as self-righteous as you.  And I’m a vindictive prick, or so I’ve been told.  Get him down.”

Rollins and Ramirez and a few others were right there, pushing on his shoulders hard.  Steve didn’t give an inch, not even with the guns on him.  Obstinately he resisted until Rollins kicked his leg again, and once they broke his stance, they were able to force him to the floor.  “Beg, Rogers,” he hissed in Steve’s ear.  “You’re a soldier, right?  Take orders.”

“No,” Steve responded.  They drove his shoulders down into the cold concrete, and a boot slammed into his head.  Steve grimaced, his cheek scraping against the concrete.  “Go to hell!”

“We’re already there,” Rollins said.  Ramirez pushed harder, putting all his weight into it.  Rollins fisted Steve’s hair, holding him at Rumlow’s feet.  Steve squirmed under the pressure, but he couldn’t free himself.  The bindings around his wrists were released for a moment, but he could hardly struggle with so much force on his upper body and the weight of a sizeable chunk of the STRIKE Team pushing him down.  They had each of his arms so tight, and the second he tried wrenching away, that awful bite of a stun baton hit his spine.  It was paralyzing and the pain was damn near blinding.  The room blackened and everything spun, time stretching to an excruciating eternity before he slipped into nothingness.

He didn’t escape for long.  Steve’s cheek stung wickedly and unexpectedly, and somehow that was enough to jar him from the numbness that had taken his senses.  “Wakey wakey,” beckoned Rumlow, and Steve lurched away.  His hands were bound above him now, linked at the wrists and connected to a chain that disappeared into the ceiling.  He was on his knees, cuffed around the ankles by the same unbreakable metal, and it was magnetically bonded to plates on the floor.  Experimentally he pulled on the chains, but they weren’t going to break.  With his legs incapacitated as they were, there was no way he could stand.  The pain from bending his wounded knee and putting his weight upon it was almost unbearable, and he could feel blood underneath his pant leg, seeping down to his toes.  They’d taken his boots and socks.  Hanging as he was, he was completely exposed.

Rumlow stood over him again.  “Ready to beg now, Cap?”

Steve’s bruised lips curled in a bit of a grin.  “Don’t hold your breath.”  He expected the blow, but it was still jarring.  Rumlow’s backhand ripped his face to the side, and blood immediately gushed into his mouth from where he’d bitten the fleshy inside of his cheek.  Steve righted himself, blinking to focus.  “I’ve been through this before.  Aren’t you supposed to ask me somethin’?”

“This isn’t an interrogation,” Rumlow explained.  “This is just plain old torture.  No reason.  No excuse.  We’re going to beat the shit out of you, Cap.  And when it’s over, when _I_ decide it’s over, we’re going to put a bullet in your skull.”

“You – you always were a power hungry bastard.”

“I’m not even going to bother suggesting that you switch sides.  You won’t.”

“Nope.”

Rumlow smirked.  “Predictable as fuck.”

“So are you.”  That won him another punch.  Steve spat a mouthful of blood to the floor.  “What’s Pierce after?  What are _you_ after?  How deep does it go, huh?”

Rollins’ boot rammed into Steve’s back, and he gasped before he could control himself.  Rumlow smiled, an anticipatory, feral thing that made his eyes burn.  “Pierce got what he was after, and he told us to kill you.  He didn’t specify how.  Or when.”  He kicked Steve cruelly in the midriff.  The strike felt strong enough to bend his ribs.  The air was driven from his lungs.  “This is what I’m after, Cap.  You dead at my feet.  All of SHIELD under our control.  Fury’s gone.  There’s no one to protect you now.”  The next kick was harder, damaging bones and muscles already hurt by the fall from the elevator.  Rumlow leaned closer.  “All those months that I had to spend listening to your Boy Scout bullshit.  Following your example.  Pretending to care what you think.  Pretending to be loyal to you.  Fucking honor and bravery and integrity.  I could hardly stand it.  You owe me this.”

“I don’t owe you a damn thing.”

“Should have let you die in Crimea.”

Steve smiled, revealing reddened teeth.  “Your mistake.”

Rumlow snarled, furious as all hell and prepared to vent what seemed to be months’ worth of pent-up rage.  He went at Steve with abandon.  Steve tried to relax, tried not to struggle (although there wasn’t much he could do, anyway), tried to stay calm and cool and unaffected as Rumlow hit him.  He kept his teeth gritted together to prevent any sound from escaping him.  But Rumlow was an expert at wearing men down.  “We’re going to make you scream.  You’re going to beg us to kill you.”

“It’ll take a while,” Steve hoarsely returned.

“Oh, I hope so.  You have no idea how long I’ve been waiting for this.”  Rumlow raised his fist to punch Steve again, but the sounds of footsteps in the hall beyond stopped him.  They’d left the door wide open, like they didn’t care if people saw them doing this, and whoever had come stopped just inside it.  Rumlow turned.  “Well, look who’s here.”

Steve couldn’t see who it was through Rumlow, so he took the moment to gather his wits.  He looked down and tried to breathe.  He would have to hang on because once they realized that drive was empty…  Maybe they’d kill him before they did.  _No.  They’ll figure out I gave it to Nat.  I’ve got to give her more time.  Tony can protect her.  Tony–_

“Dropping this off.  You shouldn’t have made such a show.  People are asking questions.”

“Fuck them,” Rumlow snapped.  “And fuck you, Barton.”

Steve’s head snapped up.  _No._   Rumlow of course noticed his reaction.  He smiled, stepping aside so his prisoner could see.  _No.  Not this.  Oh, God, not this!_   But no matter how hard his heart wanted to deny it, it was true.  Clint stood in the doorway holding his shield.  His expression was hard and unreadable, his eyes dark and empty.  He stared right at Steve, Steve who was bound and bleeding at the mercy of the STRIKE Team.  He didn’t rush forward to help.  He didn’t pull the gun from the holster around his thigh and demand Steve be released.  He didn’t even seem surprised or the least bit upset.  He did _nothing_.  _No!_

“You’re damn lucky I was able to take the shot,” Barton said sternly.  “Otherwise you’d been in a hell of a lot of trouble right now.”

That cold, devastating sense of betrayal twisted his heart even tighter.  He couldn’t stop the spiteful words from spilling from his mouth.  “You son of a bitch,” he snarled.  He yanked on the chains binding him harder and harder.  Barton looked at him dispassionately.  “You goddamn son of a bitch!”

“Looks like you hit a nerve,” Rumlow said with a cruel laugh.  He glanced at Steve knowingly.  “You wanted to know how deep it goes.  It goes deep.”

“Natasha trusted you!  I trusted you!  How the hell could you do this?”  Steve’s voice cracked in fury and fear.  Whatever secured the chains above his head creaked and moaned as he pulled, the muscles of his arms twisting and bulging, but _nothing came free_.  “How could you betray her?  You’re an Avenger, goddamn it!  You’re her–”

“Her what?” Barton snapped, narrowing his eyes.  “She chose you.”  Steve’s blood turned to ice in his veins.  “I’m choosing this.  I’m following orders, Captain.  But not Fury’s.  Not anymore.  And not yours.  I know my place, and it’s not staying loyal to a dying cause.  And it’s sure as shit not staying loyal to you.”

“Clint, you can’t do this,” Steve pleaded.  “Please.  You can’t do this!”

Rumlow’s hand shot out and decked him roughly.  “Shut up, Rogers.  Nobody wants to hear your whining.”  Steve coughed on the blood that filled his mouth anew, struggling to lift his head.  Rollins had a hand on the back of his neck, pushing him down with all of his weight.  Two more sets of hands grabbed his shoulders and applied enough force that his wrists nearly cracked.  Somebody grabbed his hair and yanked cruelly, lifting his head.  “You want to take a crack at him, Barton?”  Rumlow gestured to Steve, completely restrained by his men and utterly vulnerable.  “After all, he took your place as Fury’s go-to guy.  And he took Romanoff right out from under you.  I think he has it coming, from you of all people.  I think he deserves it, and you should be the one who gives it to him.  Go on.”

Steve jerked helplessly.  Clint watched, cold and uncaring, as a hand grabbed Steve’s chin and tilted his head back even further so that all he could see was the gray ceiling overhead and the chains running the distance to it.  The rough fingers on his jaw shifted lower to strangle him.  Now he could barely breathe.  And he could do nothing but wait for Clint to hit him, for him to work out his anger and frustration on him just as the others had and would.  Just a small part of him irrationally wondered if he didn’t deserve it in this case.

But Clint never did.  “This isn’t what I signed up for,” he said.  There was a hollow rattle, and Steve realized it was his shield hitting the floor as Barton dropped it.

“It’s a perk.  Got to take them where you can.”

“Then have it.  Pierce needs to see me.”  And with that, he was gone.

“Fucking coward,” Rumlow grumbled.

Steve struggled to breathe with the fingers gouging into his throat, struggled to see with the tears in his eyes.  He heard boots on concrete, heard the door slamming and sealing shut.  Heard the quiet hum of his shield as it was picked up from the floor.  “You want him like this?” Rollins asked from behind.

“Nah.  Let him struggle.  Let him try.”  The hands restraining him were gone, and Steve sucked in a glorious breath, sagging in his bonds.  His moment of reprieve wasn’t long-lasting.  Rumlow was there, viciously driving the toe of his boot into Steve’s belly as he stood over him.  He was fixing his arm into the straps of Steve’s shield.  “Last chance, Cap.  You wanna beg for mercy?”

 _Mercy._   He could hardly think for the rage and grief he felt.  Defeat.  Betrayal.  _God, help me._ “Would it matter?” he wearily rasped.

Rumlow grunted half a chuckle.  “No.  Would you do it if it did?”

“No.”

“Alright then.  Let’s see what you like so much about this thing.”  Rumlow smiled, and Steve had only a second to brace himself as the smooth, powerful surface of his shield came crashing into his face.


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Warnings aplenty on this chapter for content, including scenes of torture, violence, and language. Again, please read at your own discretion. Poor Steve… I think he bit off more than he could chew with this one.

It went on and on.  They weren’t fancy with their torture methods.  They didn’t need to be.  It was a beating, pure and simple, and it was brutal and unrelenting.  Captain America’s resilience and endurance were no mystery to the STRIKE Team.  They’d seen it in the past.  They’d seen it in Crimea.  They knew exactly how much he could take, and they made him take it.  Rumlow hadn’t been lying about his anticipation for this; he was by far the most active, the most cruel and engaged.  The others got their hits in as well, but Rumlow was tireless, and each punch and kick and vicious insult seemed to enthrall and excite him as much as the last.  His true colors were coming out in full force, and they were utterly hideous.

Steve knew he wasn’t doing himself any favors by defying, by keeping his mouth shut when Rumlow demanded he scream or beg.  But that was what he did.  No matter how hard they punched him, he was silent.  No matter how cruelly they kicked him, he stayed still.  No matter what, he wasn’t going let them know how badly he hurt.  And every time they wrested a groan or a whimper from him, he clamped down tighter.  His teeth were driven hard into his tongue to hold it in.  He forced himself to breathe through the pain – _it’s only pain, damn it_ – and stay strong.  _Stay strong._

_Nat needs me to be strong._

Rumlow hit harder and harder.  He was ruthless.  His fists were split, and he complained about Steve’s thick skin and hard bones and harder head.  He was a grotesque picture of evil; maybe that was trite nonsense, but Steve couldn’t think of any other way to describe him.  He was sweaty and flushed with exertion and excitement.  He was wild and unrestrained and his eyes veritably hungered from the challenge of it all.  Of making his prisoner suffer.  Of trying to get Steve to break, to force him to let loose the scream that was lodged in his throat at long last.  He was really getting off on this, and it was disgusting and infuriating and humiliating.  Steve wasn’t going to feed into his bloodlust, not even the tiniest bit, and he wasn’t giving a damn inch.  Not even as the seconds stretched to minutes and the minutes to an excruciating hour…  _No.  Not going to scream.  Not going to._

And Steve wouldn’t tell Rumlow, not even to taunt him, but he’d faced worse insanity than this, Brushov and the Red Guardian most recently but an entire litany of Nazis and HYDRA madman back during the war.  And he could have told Rumlow as those bloodied fists rammed into his chest and face and stomach that he wasn’t afraid of him.  He wasn’t – _I’m not afraid and I’ve got to stay strong_ – but he was afraid of dying like this, because as the torture went on, he knew it was taking its toll.  He could hardly draw a deep breath with his hands bound over his head as they were, but he knew some of his troubles were due to broken ribs.  There was blood in his throat, choking him when he held his breath to take a hit.  He didn’t know if it was from shock or from all the blows he’d taken to the head, but he was having a hard time focusing.  He was slipping away.  Maybe it would be better if he did.

_No.  Nat needs me to be strong.  Promised her we’d be together.  Promised._

He was becoming increasingly fearful he wasn’t going to be able to keep that promise.  The only consolation was that he was fairly sure it had been a few hours since they’d captured him and dragged him into this hell.  He couldn’t be certain; a few times he’d blacked out from a particularly nasty strike to his head (more and more frequently, he was scared to admit), so his assessment could be off.  It didn’t matter.  As long as they were here beating him to death, they weren’t out trying to find Natasha.  And if staying quiet and keeping Rumlow angry and desperate to conquer him protected her, he’d gladly do it.  When the pain turned blinding, slicing straight to his heart and stripping every thought from his brain, that was all that remained.  He had to protect her.  He had to.

_Be strong.  Keep her safe._

“Having a good time, Cap?”

He barely had the strength now to lift his head, so he sagged further forward and spat a bloody mess on Rumlow’s boots.  “No,” he managed.  He was starting not to recognize his voice.  His ears were ringing and his eyes wouldn’t focus on the dark, wrathful form leaning over him.  “Should I be?”  Rumlow backhanded him, and the world fell away again.  He heard them taunting him, insulting him and demeaning him, but he couldn’t make sense of the words.  Somebody had him by the hair, yanking his head back.  Other hands were pushing down on his shoulders until he was fairly certain they tore one, dislocating his arm and probably fracturing his wrist.  A boot slammed into his back.  They’d focused on that, the sick bastards, because they had seen how he’d suffered when the Red Guardian had hurt him.  They’d seen how the doctors had struggled to save his life and restore his fractured spine.  They _knew_ he was weak there even weeks after because they’d witnessed firsthand how damaged he’d been.  Sick bastards.  They weren’t strong enough to break it again – _they’re not strong enough to break me_ – but that didn’t stop them from trying.  They tried and they laughed and they growled with frustration when Steve kept his cries in and let his mind check out.  Eventually, when they battered a particularly sore spot in his lower back, he faded.  The memories were as bad as the pain.  The memories…

_Nat, I need you._

He let himself go back, back to when Natasha had taken care of him when he’d been recovering after the fight in Volgograd.  The first few days he’d been home had been difficult, and he’d been unable to do anything for himself.  He’d seen a side of Natasha in those days that he’d never seen before, a side that seemed to be as new and timid to her as it had been to him.  She’d been so gentle, so caring, so giving.  The long hours he’d spent suffering with his back locked in spasm after spasm had been made so much more bearable by her embrace, by her soft words of encouragement, by her hands soothing away the knots in his muscles and the pain in his nerves.  He could find comfort in that by remembering it now.  He did.  He let himself go in the love, in the warmth.  The long days they’d spent in his bed, in his living room together, talking and watching TV and exploring each other.  In getting to know more about each other.  In adoring each other.  Her hands, tender and supportive as she’d guided him to the kitchen to get lunch, to his bedroom to sleep beside her, to the shower where she’d teased him and tormented him in the best ways imaginable almost as much as she’d helped him wash.  She was lying beside him in bed, one arm over his chest, her head propped on her other.  She was looking down on him as he slipped his fingers between hers slowly.  Her eyes.  Her smile, her _real_ smile, and he knew it was his and his alone.  Her heart.  She was so beautiful.  _“You with me, babe?”_

“You with us, princess?”

“He’s fucking finished.”

Fingers pressed roughly into his jaw, squeezing painfully tight, and lifted his face.  Steve heard himself groan.  He couldn’t make his eyelids open all the way, and everything was a smear of light and shadow and red.  Rumlow had his arms folded over his shirt.  He looked down on Steve in disgust and irritation.  “Gotta say, Cap.  I’m starting to lose my patience.”

He couldn’t remember why.  For a moment, he couldn’t remember how he’d gotten to be where he was.  Unfortunately, that didn’t last.  One of the other STRIKE members stood beside Rumlow, and he sneered as he kicked Steve right in the crotch.  Steve almost forgot to swallow down his cry.  Almost.  He managed to jab his teeth into his lower lip at the last second hard enough to draw fresh blood.  He struggled through the pain, letting his anger fuel his strength and resistance.  “Not sure that I care,” he slurred.

“You should care,” Rumlow corrected, “because this isn’t ending until you break.  You know that.”

Steve gritted his teeth.  Everything was rapidly dissolving.  His brutalized body was just a throbbing source of misery, but he could ignore it.  He could.  “Won’t,” he grunted around halting breath.

“Why the hell not?  There’s nothing to prove now, Cap.  Scream.  Beg me to end it.  Beg me to shoot you.”

“No.”

Rumlow pulled his handgun from his holster and jabbed it into Steve’s forehead.  His finger was tight on the trigger.  “I want to see the great Captain America pleading with me.  Come on.  I promise it’ll be a quick end if you do.”

Steve pulled on the restraints, even with his damaged shoulder and wrists.  At least when he’d faced death in the past he’d been able to fight.  This was enraging, frustrating, and belittling.  Part of him wanted it to be over now, particularly if his death was inevitable, but the stronger part of him knew it was only a matter of time before Pierce discovered he’d lied about the USB drive.  He didn’t know what would be better in that case.  If they killed him now, they’d have no link to the data.  But they’d figure out he’d given it to Natasha; Pierce was smart, and it was logical.  If they let him live and wasted time interrogating him, that could only protect Natasha further, give her more of a chance to escape to Tony.  He had so little control over anything at this point, but he felt like he had control over that.  Furthermore, submitting to these monsters was unbearable.  “You’re a lyin’ bastard,” he swore, his eyes flashing in defiance.  “ _Never._ ”

Rumlow’s jaw twitched like he was grinding his teeth.  He crouched in front of Steve, and the gun slipped down his captive’s face until it was pressed to his lips.  “I don’t think you understand me,” he hissed close to Steve’s cheek.  “Nobody knows you’re here.  _Nobody_.  I can keep you down here forever if I want.  My own personal toy.  Every time something pisses me off, you know, gets under my skin?  I can come down and work out my frustrations.  You have no idea how much bullshit I have to take.  You want me taking all of it out on you?”

Steve struggled to turn his head away from the gun, but he couldn’t, not with so many people holding him still.  He didn’t want to chance opening his mouth to answer.  Rumlow’s eyes glinted, knowing exactly what it was Steve feared and feasting off it.  “Huh?  You want that?”  Hands shoved him closer, and boots dug into the bleeding welts on his back.  “You want that, Rogers?”

Steve lost it.  He pulled as hard as he could with strength he didn’t know he still had, and the restraints actually gave.  It wasn’t much; the brackets holding the chains at the ceiling bent, and the length extended just a couple of inches.  But it was enough to startle Rumlow, and he fell back, his eyes widening and betraying that he was _still_ afraid of Steve.  That was enough to stoke the fires of Steve’s resistance, and he pulled harder and harder, feeling the metal bend, feeling it buckle, and praying it was ripping loose of the ceiling.

It didn’t.  And his moment of triumph was short-lived.  The STRIKE Team was on him, holding him back, beating him senseless.  “You piece of shit,” Rumlow snarled, and he smacked Steve across the face with the gun.

“Kill him,” Ramirez offered.  “He’s not gonna break.  Just get it over with.”

“No,” Rumlow snapped.  “No chance in hell he gets off that easy.”

“But our orders–”

“Fuck our orders,” Rumlow snapped, and he turned furious eyes on his team members as if daring them to question him.

“No,” Rollins roughly said.  His patience was spent.  “Fuck this.  You want him to scream?  I’ll make him scream.”  Steve tried to see Rollins, but he couldn’t.  A few others grabbed the chains and loosened them further.  Before Steve could even register that he should fight, they yanked the chains down and him down with them until his shoulders were on the floor.  They pulled toward the front of the room in some sort of twisted game of tug of war, stretching his arms out as far as they could.  Steve struggled wildly, his heart furiously pumping, his breath coming in rattling, rapid pants.  Panic left him shaking.  He couldn’t protect himself.  And he couldn’t see behind him.  He couldn’t–

“No!” he cried out as hands grabbed his hips and pulled him back.  He heard the crackle of a stun baton charging up.  “No!  _No!_ ”  His shout escalated into a sharp, short cry as the baton was jabbed into the section of his back they’d been intent on brutalizing, and the pain was completely excruciating.  The air was sucked from his lungs and his voice died on him, which he vaguely thought was good because that meant he couldn’t scream.  The burning hell washing over him went on for an eternity.  Eventually the agony was gone, but his mind was sluggish in realizing it.  His body was too, little aftershocks from the electrocution still jolting over him.  He managed to regain enough awareness to feel that baton being poked into his flesh.

“Which would you prefer, Rogers?” Rumlow asked.  Rollins dragged the baton lower and lower, under his belt and the waistband of his jeans.  Steve jerked, tears filling his eyes.  “You want it down your throat or up your–”

“What’s going on here?”

The question made everyone stop.  Steve almost choked on his relief, lifting his head from the floor despite the hands pushing him down and looking toward the door.  He didn’t think he’d ever be so glad to see Pierce.  The older man stood there, still dressed in his nice gray suit, eyeing the scene before him in distaste.  His gaze narrowed as he waited for an answer.  Clint was with him, standing to the side.  His eyes flicked briefly to the state Steve was in, bloodied and beaten and held down as he was, and for the shortest second Steve thought he saw worry and terror – the driving desire to _help_ – flash in his eyes.  If it was there, it was gone in a blink, and the archer’s face was stony once more.

Rollins moved from behind Steve, and Rumlow stepped away.  Still, there was no way to escape because nearly every gun in the room was immediately pointed at him.  Steve squirmed despite that, yanking his bonds closer to his chest, shrugging off the hands on his arms and back, and leaning up from the floor.  Pierce’s eyes roamed over the STRIKE Team, and they were all silent, like they’d been caught doing something wrong.  Steve could only hope.  He could barely shake off his terror, barely make his heart slow and his breaths come.  He was trembling.

Pierce’s sharp gaze finally settled on him.  He sighed and raised his eyebrows as he stepped in the room.  He slid his hands into the pockets of his pants.  “You weren’t authorized to take Captain Rogers prisoner,” he said to Rumlow.

Rumlow straightened to his full height.  It was hard to tell if he was daunted by the cool words.  “Sir.”  That was all he said, because there was no excuse and no explanation.

Pierce spared the STRIKE commander a glance, and the silence that came over the room was stiff and unpleasant.  It was as though he was allowing the unspoken threat of some sort of disciplinary action to loom over his men.  Steve wondered if it was just for show, and if it was, was it for his benefit or theirs?  Pierce stepped closer.  Not close enough that Steve could reach him.  Not close enough to the mess of blood painting the floor.  It was as if he was removed from this.  Above it.  Like he didn’t control it or have a hand in creating it.  Steve was battered by such a storm of anger and horror and fear that all he wanted to do was wipe that smug look off of Pierce’s face.  And shake some goddamn sense into Barton.  “Well, it’s just as well, I guess.”  Pierce’s expression tightened in expertly controlled anger and blatant disappointment.  “Captain, it seems you and I need to have another discussion.”

Steve managed to get his breathing under control enough to speak, but it wasn’t easy.  “We don’t have anything to talk about.”

“I disagree.”  That seemed to embolden the SHIELD agents around him to restrain him again, which they did with renewed fervor.  Steve growled in the back of his throat in frustration as he was pushed onto the floor and the chains around his wrists were pulled tight.  He couldn’t look up now, once more utterly vulnerable, and cold shivers raced up and down his body.  The sound of Pierce’s shoes on the floor was thunderous, despite the roar of his pulse between his ears.  A second later the black leather was right in front of his nose.  Steve jerked, trying to move away, but Rumlow tightened his grip on his hair.  “I have to admit, Captain.  I didn’t peg you for a liar.”

“Funny.  That’s exactly what I thought you were,” Steve returned through gritted teeth.  Rumlow yanked hard on his hair, and the gun was against his temple.

“This drive you gave me.”  Pierce dropped it on the floor right in front of Steve.  It clattered uselessly against the concrete.  “It’s empty.”

“Yep.”

“Your attitude is not going to help you,” Pierce admonished firmly.  He must have nodded to Rumlow, because the next thing Steve knew he was being hauled onto his knees again.  The room spun nauseatingly for a moment as Steve struggled to focus.  “I want to know where the data from the _Lemurian Star_ is,” Pierce said, looking down dispassionately on his captive.

Steve shook his head.  “Don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He expected to be hit for that.  Belted across the face or struck in the chest or worse.  But he wasn’t.  He expected this to be the beginning of it now.  Now that Pierce had discovered his duplicity, this was when the true test would begin.  This was when they’d go at him with a purpose, break him to learn what they needed to know.  He’d tensed in anticipation, waiting for it to start, but it never did.  Pierce only glared at him, his arms folded across his chest.  “Alright, Captain.  You wanted to know what Project: Insight is.  I think it’s time we showed you.”

* * *

None of the men surrounding him, not Pierce or Clint or Rumlow or any of the STRIKE Team, seemed one bit disturbed by the fact they were dragging him in the sad state he was in through the Triskelion in plain view of anyone they passed.  What was more upsetting than that was the fact that the people they passed didn’t seem to care, either.  Hardly any of them even looked twice.  Steve wasn’t in much of a condition to struggle now, as beaten and hobbled as he was, but if even one tech or soldier or SHIELD agent had looked his way with just the slightest inclination to help him, he would have fought with everything he had left.  _It goes deep._   That was what Rumlow had said.  The corruption, the _evil_ , ran deep, and if people weren’t actively involved, they sure as hell seemed blissfully ignorant at best or ambivalent and complacent at worst.  It was horrifying.

They took Steve to the elevator, where he was pushed to his knees, flanked by Rumlow and Rollins.  Clint had his sidearm out, and he was nonchalantly holding it close enough to Steve for the muzzle of the gun to be against the throbbing pulse point under Steve’s jaw.  They’d rebound his arms behind him, and his dislocated shoulder was on fire.  His leg was a miserable mess of blood and shattered bone and raw nerve endings, and kneeling was torture in and of itself.  But Steve refused to tremble, keeping his breathing under control and his mind focused.  Pierce commanded they be taken to the Insight Bay.  He shook his head in regret.  “You have no idea how much trouble you’ve caused, Captain.”

There was a snarky answer on the tip of Steve’s tongue, but he bit it back.  He said nothing, did nothing.  Clint’s gun was too close to his neck to chance it, although he didn’t think they would kill him now.  Not when they needed him.  Pierce sighed as the elevator descended.  “You know, I wasn’t lying about my father.  He really did admire you.  I was just five years old when he was off in the war, and when he came back, he used to tell me stories about Captain America leading the American troops to victory.  But even with you there, a super soldier fighting on their side, so many men died.  So much… wasted.”  Pierce’s eyes were a little glazed, and he heaved another long breath.  “You know how many people died in World War II?”

Steve didn’t answer.  Apparently he was supposed to, because Rumlow smacked him rather roughly upside the head.  “Answer the goddamn question.”

Steve’s skull wracked from the blow.  He swallowed thickly, trying to fight through the dizziness.  Rumlow looked ready to belt him again, but Pierce shot him a sideways glance and he stopped himself.  “Doesn’t matter.  Over sixty million.  Sixty _million._   Soldiers.  Civilians.  Innocents.  The Holocaust alone was decimating.  The war was the single bloodiest conflict in human history, and you lived through it.  Fought through it.  Let me ask you.”  Pierce stepped to the front of the elevator and gazed down on his prisoner.  “If you’d had the chance to stop that, to prevent all of that death and violence and disease and suffering…  Would you have done it?”  Steve blinked, his eyes stubbornly refusing to focus.  The elevator was below ground, but he couldn’t see beyond Pierce’s towering form.  “I want an answer this time.”

Another hand wove its way through his hair tightly, painfully tightly, and he realized it was Clint.  The gun pressed harder into the soft flesh of his throat.  The feel of Clint threatening him like this was enough to jolt a response from his lips.  “Yes.”

“That’s the start of it, Captain.  How far would you have gone?  What would you have sacrificed?”  Steve grimaced.  He didn’t want to be goaded into this argument, whatever its point was.  He didn’t have it in him for mind games.  “Would you have destroyed Germany before the first shot in Poland was ever fired?  Would you have bombed Japan before they bombed Pearl Harbor?  What if you’d had a way to figure out which men would become Nazis years before they did?  What if you could know who would be good and who would be evil?”  Pierce raised an eyebrow.  “What if you could have saved the lives of sixty million by sacrificing a few million?  Would you have done it?”

Steve still didn’t answer.  He didn’t have one, at least not an easy one.  War was truly hell.  Pierce was right.  He had lived through it, killed men, lost so many friends, suffered and sacrificed his own life.  So many men had left to defend their countries, and so many hadn’t come home.  And so many civilians had lost their lives as well.  The devastation had been widely spread and deeply felt.  But if Pierce was asking him if he’d murder or imprison men based on what they _might_ do…  Or if he’d destroy an entire country or race because of a chance that it might one day be the basis of conflict…  Pierce grunted, offering up a small smile.  “It’s a pity the point is moot.  The technology didn’t exist back then.”  His smile turned somewhat whimsical.

The elevator reached its destination.  The doors opened, and Pierce stepped out with his aides and a few members of the STRIKE Team.  Steve was pulled to his feet and pushed forward at gun point, Clint’s grip on one elbow tight and Rumlow’s grasp on his other overly harsh.  They drove him after Pierce, and he staggered and stumbled when his beaten form failed him.  They stood him beside the Secretary, who was appreciatively sweeping his eyes around.  “Well, it sure as hell exists now.”

Before them was a huge, cavernous, sprawling bay that stretched on for maybe a mile.  It housed three helicarriers, each supported by gigantic struts and construction platforms that towered over everything around them.  Steve felt awe wash over him, prickling his gooseflesh, and it was followed by chilly fear.  Each helicarrier was massive, fitted with four engines that looked sleek, powerful, and newly designed.  They were amply equipped with guns and cannons, the best and most potent technology could produce and money could buy.  Cranes lifted supplies, quinjets, munitions, and other aircraft to the flight decks.  There were hundreds of people working everywhere: engineers welding at the hulls, techs laboring over circuits and computer terminals, flight crews preparing their equipment, SHIELD agents overseeing the efforts.  Steve knew right away that these helicarriers were almost ready to fly.  The size and breadth of this was simply staggering.  Amazing.  _Horrifying._   This had grown, been designed, developed, and realized, right under their noses, and they hadn’t known a _thing_ about it.

Pierce looked disgustingly pleased.  “This is Project: Insight,” he announced proudly, “three next generation helicarriers synced to a global network of targeting satellites.  The carriers are designed to maintain constant suborbital flight.”  They started walking as Pierce explained, Steve’s captors keeping a tight grip on him as they forced him to maintain pace with the Secretary.  Thankfully, Pierce seemed more interested in taking an ambling stroll than a brisk inspection, because Steve could barely keep up.  “That’s a feat made possible by your friend Stark, in case you’re interested.  These new repulsor engines are significantly more efficient than our old turbines.”  Steve glanced up at the darkened circle that marked the engine, wondering if Tony had known for what his input had been used.  He sincerely hoped not.  They dragged him closer beneath the carrier labeled IN-01.  “The helicarriers are fast enough to transport a sizeable army, complete with air support and a full armament of cutting edge weaponry, anywhere around the globe.  But the hope is, Captain, that they’ll never need to.”  Pierce gestured upward toward an array of guns affixed to the belly of the helicarrier.  “Our precision long-range guns can eliminate a thousand hostiles a minute.  And the satellites can read a terrorist’s DNA before he even steps foot outside his safe house.  Can you imagine the significance of that?  Our ability to pre-emptively attack our enemies has increased a thousand fold thanks to the link between these helicarriers and our satellite network, a link which was developed and beta-tested by WorldCom.”

Steve wasn’t sure what to think of this.  If he hadn’t been taken prisoner and beaten, this might not have been so upsetting.  Who the hell was he kidding.  “I was right,” he muttered disdainfully.  “This really is about striking first.”

Pierce smiled wanly.  “I’ve already told you not to be so naïve.  Project: Insight is the future of world security.  With these helicarriers, we can bring about a new world order.”

“Right.  A new world order where you’re holding a gun to everyone on earth and calling it protection.”

“I’m not even calling it that.”  The gloves were off, it seemed.

“That’s why you murdered Nick Fury?  He wouldn’t go along with this.”

Pierce grunted a little chuckle.  “I guess I couldn’t fool you with my story about Nick’s betrayal.”

“Not enough to make me believe you.”

“I want to show you something.  Come with me.”  Pierce walked further beneath the helicarrier.  Steve didn’t follow until Rumlow nudged him rather forcefully with his gun.  He nearly tripped and fell, but he managed to keep his feet beneath them.  The others hung back a little, but they were tense, watching him with angry, hawkish eyes, Clint included.  The traitor seemed ready to pounce at any moment.  “You see right there?”  Pierce’s voice drew his attention.  The older man pointed upward to a glass structure on the bottom of the helicarrier.  It was half a sphere bulging from the belly of the beast made of shining glass and reinforced steel.  “That’s the satellite uplink server room.  Inside there dozens of server blades, each working with the Insight satellites to coordinate the carrier’s targeting systems.  That drive you stole from the _Lemurian Star_ contains the algorithm developed by WorldCom to connect each carrier with the satellite system.  Without it, we can’t launch.”

Steve felt his strength starting to slip.  “Gotta say you’re not convincing me to help you by telling me this.”

“Oh, I can convince you.  But I’d rather do it without another round of you going through what you just went through.”  Pierce cocked his head, appraising Steve evenly.  “Maybe next time nobody will be there to stop them.”  A chill crawled its way up Steve’s spine from the small of his back.  Pierce paused and let that very real threat sink in.  “This is the future, Captain.  The next stage of war.  I meant what I said before about our common enemies.  Disorder and chaos.  How long until another attack like 9/11 occurs?  How long until a dirty bomb destroys London or an EMP brings Chicago to its knees?  I’ll ask you again: if you’d been able to prevent World War II, would you have done it?”

“Not if it meant this,” Steve returned without a shred of doubt in his voice.  “This isn’t freedom.  This is fear.”

“Who said anything about freedom?  This is the way things are.  Freedom is a thing of the past.  And I hate to say it but you’re still living in it if you think holding out against me is going to stop us.”  Pierce came closer, like what he was about to say was terribly private.  “The world is changing, Captain, and we can’t go back.  None of us.  Not even you.”

Steve was repulsed by all of this, but he struggled not to show it.  “What are you saying?”

“I’m going to offer this chance to you.  Once and only once, make no mistake.  There are those among us who would prefer to see you killed for all the trouble you’ve caused us.  Me, I’m a man who understands the worth of assets.  The value of irreplaceable resources.  And you’re a resource, Captain.  An extremely valuable one.  There have been countless attempts to recreate you, but none of them succeeded.  That makes you worth the risk.”

“What risk?”  And then Steve understood.  “You want me to join you?”  He could hardly believe he was hearing this.  “You ordered the STRIKE Team to kill me at least twice.”

“That was before fate or destiny or whatever you want to call it landed you right here, like this, in front of me and completely at my mercy.”  Steve stiffened.  He tried to hide his reaction, but he didn’t succeed.  Pierce’s eyes glimmered in knowing arrogance.  “Faced with torture and execution, maybe you might be more open to persuasion.  To seeing some common sense.  I know you’re smart enough to realize that there’s no way out for you.  Are you more loyal than wise, though?  You want to throw your lot in with the dying crowd like Nick Fury did?  I can be civil.  I can even be forgiving if I stand to gain from it.”  Steve looked down.  For some reason the weight of the pain seemed so much worse.  “I can be forgiving, Captain, but do not test me.  I can be ruthless as well.”

“I know,” Steve gritted out.

“No, you don’t.  You have no idea how ruthless I can be.”  Steve looked down, watching the blood smear from his bare feet to the cold concrete beneath them.  He was low and lost.  The enormity of what he was facing was stark before him.  Pierce was right and he damn well knew it.  There was no way out.  _No way out._ “Captain America and everything he symbolizes is dead.  But you can be so much more if you… realign your values.  Fight for those in power.  We could use a man of your skill on our side, a soldier in our war.  The best soldier in history _winning_ our war.”

Steve stood as tall as he could.  “Go to hell,” he hissed, “and take your goddamn offer with you.”

Pierce’s eyes darkened murderously, though his face betrayed nothing.  He’d actually thought Steve would have turned and taken his proposal.  _Never._   “You know what we’ll do to you to find out what we need to know.  I want that drive back, and I don’t care who I have to hurt or kill to get it.”

“I won’t talk.”

“Not even if it would spare Agent Romanoff’s life?”  Steve’s heart skipped a beat.  Pierce’s smile was nothing short of derogatory.  “Did you give her the drive?  She seems like a logical choice, maybe even the only choice.”

Now it came to it.  He was going to have to lie, and he prayed he had the strength and fortitude to be convincing.  “No.”

Pierce didn’t believe him.  “Did you give it to her?” he repeated, slowly and carefully.

“Why the hell would I do that?  She was the logical choice, so _no_.”

“Then where is it?”

“I’m not going to tell you.”

“What if I were to promise you that Agent Romanoff’s life will be spared if you cooperate?” Pierce said.  “What if I told you that she’ll be left alone, that she’d be _safe_?”

As much as he wanted that, as much as he was _dying_ for it and desperate to believe it was possible, he couldn’t take this offer, either.  He couldn’t trade the safety of the world like this, no matter how much he loved her.  And he knew Natasha wouldn’t want him to.  This was the end result of the gamble he’d made.  He’d bought her a few hours to get to New York, to get to Stark and do _something_ to stop SHIELD.  And he’d paid for it with his life.  That was how it would end, and he couldn’t go back.  “No.”

Pierce was losing his patience.  “You wanted to negotiate before.  It’s obvious she means quite a lot to you.  I give you my word that we’ll bring her in without harming her.  I give you my word, Captain.”

“Your word doesn’t mean anything to me.”

“Did you give it to her?  Did you?”

Steve narrowed his eyes and kept his face lax and expressionless.  “No.”

Pierce stared at him, trying to read him and judge him.  Steve did his best to remain as aloof and unwavering as possible.  He’d stared down men like this before.  Men worse than this.  At least, he hoped so.  Finally Pierce raised his eyebrows and pursed his lips.  “You’re making this harder on yourself.”  He said that like he was reminding a child to whom he was doling out discipline and punishment.

Steve gritted his teeth.  “Do you think I care?”

Pierce looked extremely disappointed.  That was all it took, that single glance of disapproval, and the STRIKE Team was back, grabbing at him.  The Secretary appraised Rumlow and Barton evenly.  “Find her.  If she has the drive, take it back and kill her.”  Steve pulled away, panic electrifying him.  Some part of him still tethered to rational thought made him hold his tongue; if he said anything now, begged them to leave her alone, it would only confirm that she had the USB drive.  It would only betray himself and her.  He would have to trust that she–  “And if she doesn’t have it, bring her back.  We can use her against him.”

That freed his anger, and his rage trampled any sense of logic.  “Don’t touch her!”  He struggled in earnest now, letting all of his anger free that he’d tried to keep contained since he’d surrendered himself.  “You bastard!  She doesn’t know anything!  _She doesn’t have it!_ ”

Pierce turned.  “Take him back down.  We’re done here.”

Steve wasn’t done by a longshot.  He wrenched away from the men holding him, shouldering one in the chest and kicking another.  He charged forward, moving with shocking speed and power despite his wounds, and plowed straight into Clint.  They both went down hard.  The surge of energy, of strength and defiance, was like a rush of power to his battered bones and bruised muscles, and he pulled hard on the cuffs.  The metal finally gave, _finally_ , and he yanked his arms around to ball his fists into Barton’s combat vest.  “If you hurt her, so help me…”  He couldn’t finish, the rage making his throat tight.  He stared down into Clint’s face, into the other man’s eyes.  This man that he’d once thought to be friendly and trustworthy and good.  This man that at one point he’d trusted to follow his orders, to save the city.  To save his life.  Steve felt betrayed on such a fundamental level, in a way he’d never felt before.  “You’ll rot in hell for this.”

He never got to do anything else than threaten Clint.  He’d thrown away whatever minute chance for escape he might have had.  A half a dozen hands grabbed him by the remains of his shirt, yanking him off Barton’s form.  One of the larger STRIKE agents wrapped an arm around his neck.  He still fought, fought with everything he had.  He managed to elbow the guy in the belly, dislodging his choke hold, and delivered two quick punches with his undamaged left arm to the men surrounding him.  He turned to run.

There was a flash of black and silver.  _The Winter Soldier_.  He stalked toward Steve’s staggering form from behind their group.  Steve’s eyes widened, and he backpedaled.  His destroyed left leg immediately failed him with the motion, and he stumbled.  The Winter Soldier was _right there_ , and the metal arm caught him right across the face with enough force to lift him and spin him in the air.  He landed hard on his right side.  There he lay, gasping for breath with the harsh lights and stark shadows of the Insight Bay swirling in a nauseating, draining circle around him.  He weakly tried to roll to his back to get the pressure off of his flank, but before he could coordinate his body in that seemingly simple motion, a boot slammed into his belly and hooked under his ribs and did it for him.

The heavy foot then drove down into his throat.  Steve barely got his hands under it to push back before it crushed his windpipe.  He choked, kicking vainly.  Through the thundering hum of his heart, he heard Pierce.  “You have your orders, Agent Barton.  Is that going to be a problem?”

“No, sir.”

“Then go.  Hunt her down.”

Steve grimaced, struggling for every breath through his constricted throat.  “No,” he grunted.  “Clint, don’t!  Clint!”  Clint turned, Rumlow with him, and they and most of the STRIKE Team walked quickly back toward the elevators.  They didn’t need to contain the prisoner anymore.  The Winter Soldier was there.  Steve pushed up with all of his strength, but it wasn’t enough to free himself.  “You’re wasting your time!” he growled at Pierce with the little air he had left in his body.  “I wasn’t stupid enough to give it to her!”

Whether or not Pierce believed his lie was irrelevant.  “I like to cover my bases,” Pierce said.  His eyes flicked to the Winter Soldier, and he nodded.

Steve barely had a chance to move his gaze back to the dark threat above him before that metal hand balled into a fist and rammed down into his face.  His head snapped back into the concrete hard enough to finally shred his hold on consciousness.  He caught a glimpse of brown hair and blue eyes and Bucky’s face – _Bucky?_ – before blackness at long last took him down.

* * *

Steve was pretty sure he was being dragged somewhere.  Pretty sure.  Things were really messed up in his head now.  Through the fog of unconsciousness, wisps of things, tendrils of memories and fleeting emotions, were grabbing at him.  He hurt badly.  Were they still beating him?  _“Sometimes I think you like getting hit.”_

_“I had him on the ropes.”_

He tried to speak, but his mouth wouldn’t work.  His tongue was leaden inside it and his lips were bloody and numb and his voice was gone, trapped as a gurgle in his throat.

_“This isn’t payback, is it?”_

_“Now why would I do that.”_

He struggled to grab something, but he couldn’t.  His arms wouldn’t work right, either.  He realized it was because they were tied behind his back.  Again.  He blinked tears from his eyes, the floor cold and hard beneath his chest and chin as he slid along it.  He squirmed, groaning uselessly, struggling even more uselessly.

_“Quit it.  You’re makin’ it worse.”_

_“You don’t have to do that.  It’s fi–”_

_“You need to stop fighting, Stevie.  You need to stop!”_

He drifted.  Awareness was too tenuous, too stubborn to stay with him, slick in his fingers and he couldn’t hold onto it.  He knew he needed to fight now.  No matter what, he needed to stay strong.  To lie.  To protect Natasha.  God, he loved her.  He needed to fight for her.  He needed to fight!

_“The thing is you don’t have to.  I’m with you till the end of the line, pal.”_

“Wake up.”

The harsh demand cut through the haze, and Steve jerked.  His eyes snapped opened to see Pierce standing over him again.  Any trace of civility was gone from his gaze.  Rollins was beside him, his finger poised on the trigger of his rifle, staring down at Steve in hatred and fury.  Steve gasped out a halting breath, swallowing the burn of bile and the tang of blood, drawing a shuddering breath as deep into his chest as his damaged muscles and bones could allow.  He was back on his knees, his wrists bound above his head again.  He closed his eyes, sighing slowly.  “I guess this is where you get ruthless, right,” he weakly said with as much bravado as he could muster.

Pierce wasn’t amused.  “I don’t have time for this, Captain.  Where is the USB drive?”

“Dunno.”

“Did you give it to Romanoff?”

“No.”

“Where is she?  Where was she going?”

“I don’t know.”

“Where?”

“I don’t know.”

_“Where?”_

“Rogers, Steven G.  37337566.”

Pierce’s eyes flashed.  Steve dropped his chin to his chest as he waited to be hit.  He prayed for the strength to survive.  He prayed for Sam to protect Natasha and for God to protect both of them.  He prayed Natasha would forgive him for breaking his promise to her.  He wasn’t walking away from this.  He wasn’t.

But the blow never came.  He realized there was someone behind him.  Someone strong who exuded something very dark and very twisted.  _The Winter Soldier._ He chanced looking up.  Pierce walked away from him and sat in a metal chair that had been brought into the room.  He crossed his legs at the knee and stared at Steve evenly.  “I’ve deployed quite a few resources to see Project: Insight launch.  The man you fought in Algiers and on the causeway yesterday…  He’s like you.  Valuable.  Irreplaceable.  The world calls him the Winter Soldier, I’ve heard.  Ominous, I have to say.”  He grunted a fake laugh.  “You know what I call him?”  Pierce smiled smugly.  “The Asset.”

Steve stiffened.  The hand in his hair now was metal, and it was tight.  So goddamn tight.  Every muscle in his body turned taut with terror and barely restrained panic.  Pierce was pleased with his reaction.  “He’s a real marvel.  The perfect warrior.  The perfect assassin.  A killer, in every sense of the word.  No compassion.  No doubt.  Nothing that even remotely makes him human.  A gun, and my finger is on the trigger.”  The Winter Soldier’s fingers pulled harder and harder until Steve was certain another yank would rip his scalp.  “A man who’s not a man anymore.  A machine.  He really doesn’t need a name.  At one point he had one, but he doesn’t know it.  Not anymore.  You might, though.”

_What?_

Pierce smiled cruelly.  “Yes.  I think you might know him, if I’m not mistaken.”

_No._

Now it didn’t matter if it hurt.  He had to know.  It was like that niggling sense of familiarity that had been bothering him since the fight on the train exploded into a scream, and he couldn’t stay still.  He couldn’t ignore it.  He turned, fighting against the restraints and the hand in his hair and the pain.  He turned and he _looked_.

“No.”  The faint whisper came from his torn lips.  He hadn’t thought to speak.  His mind was lost.  _Lost._   “No…”  Those eyes, empty and deadened.  That face, framed in messy brown hair.  The unshaven jaw, strong and clenched hard.  _No, no, no._ That wasn’t…  It couldn’t be…  It wasn’t possible!  Bucky was dead.  Bucky was dead!  _No!_   “Bucky?”

There was absolutely _no_ recognition in Bucky’s eyes.  _None._

The horror churning in Steve’s stomach nearly made him vomit.  And the pain in his heart was unbearable.  His mind was gone, adrift in a sea of denial and memory and shock so strong he couldn’t form a single coherent thought.  How.  When.  Who and what and why.  None of that mattered.  Time slowed to a standstill, and he was trapped in the moment, in this _awful_ moment when the full brunt of the truth became completely irrefutable.  This man – this man who’d murdered Sitwell and Fury and who’d tried to kill him – this man who’d shot Natasha – this man was Bucky.

Steve choked on part of a sob and sagged, all the strength, all the _fight_ , leaving him on a shuddering breath.  _Oh, God.  Please, not this…  Not this!_

The chair scraped on the floor slightly.  Pierce rose to his feet, straightening his suit.  “It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it?” he said.  His gaze shifted to the Winter Soldier.  “Make him talk.”

Steve was hardly aware as Pierce strolled from the room.  He was hardly aware, sinking down deep into despair, as Bucky shifted, letting his hair loose so that his head dropped limply to his chest.  He was hardly aware as Bucky stood in front of him.

_Please, somebody help me…  Nat, please…  Please!_

“Bucky,” he whispered.  He lifted teary eyes to his friend – his brother who’d taken care of him and been there for him and loved him as if they were flesh and blood – and stared hard and deep.  That face was so familiar.  So often it had been bright with laughter and affection and loyalty.  So often it had been graced with a wide, knowing grin.  Bucky’s face.  But not.  _The Winter Soldier._   Desperation made Steve’s head pound.  “Bucky, listen,” he said.  The words came fast, tumbling over each other and harsh with panic.  “Please listen to me.  Listen to me!  You know me.  It’s Steve, Buck.  It’s Steve.  You know me.  You know–”

Bucky hit him hard across the face with his metal fist, ripping Steve’s head to the side and his heart seemingly out of his chest.  “Bucky,” Steve gasped, nearly gagging on the blood flooding his mouth.  That hand struck again, decking him just as roughly in the other direction.  “Bucky, no.  Don’t…”  Bucky grabbed Steve’s right arm and twisted and twisted, bearing his teeth with the effort.  Bones bent.  Skin tore.  “Bucky,” he begged.  “Don’t!  It’s Steve!  _Don’t!_ ”

The Winter Soldier started breaking him.  Steve started screaming.


	10. Chapter 10

The racket of a semi-trailer roaring down the highway woke Natasha from her restless sleep.  She jerked forward, her eyes snapping open and her hand tightening immediately on the trigger of the gun at her side.  It took her a moment to remember where she was and what had happened.  And when she did and glanced around and found herself safe, she tucked the weapon back down and dared to take a breath.

Steve had surrendered himself to the STRIKE Team six hours ago.  Since then, she and Sam hadn’t made the progress for which she’d hoped.  It wasn’t for lack of trying.  They’d managed to steal a car not long after running from Sam’s house, though it had taken some time to put enough distance between them and the STRIKE Team where they’d felt safe enough to do it.  And getting out of DC had been a cat and mouse game of sorts.  Any doubts that SHIELD wasn’t looking for her dissipated quickly enough when she noticed the enhanced security everywhere.  DC Metro cops had flooded the streets, guarding the major thoroughfares like hawks circling prey.  Natasha had gotten out of tougher situations than this, and she knew well that the key to escaping a manhunt was prodigious patience.  So she and Sam avoided the obvious routes, sticking to less populated areas and roads.  It was slower and more roundabout, but safer.  When they saw the cops patrolling the streets, they considered dumping the car and going on foot, finding a bus or a train.  She knew well how SHIELD operated, so she could anticipate how they would attempt to shut down the city.  Metro transit was too risky.  Still, their patience and circuitous path proved to be the right course, and after a few long, tense, and frustrating hours, they’d escaped DC.

They’d headed north, again avoiding the major expressways and sticking to the back roads as much as possible.  It felt like they were creeping at the rate they were going, and it was damn difficult to stick to it.  Natasha rode in the passenger seat of the sedan they’d taken, barely able to think about anything other than Steve.  Sam had been quiet and stiff beside her, his eyes on the rearview mirror to watch behind them nearly as much as they were on the road before them.  He was worried and not doing a damn thing to hide it.  She didn’t know him all that well (at all, to be honest), but she could see that he was scared for Steve, too.  “He’ll get out,” Sam had said once as they’d snaked their way farther north than necessary to give Baltimore a wide berth.  “He’ll find us.  He had a plan.”

Though she hadn’t said otherwise, Natasha wasn’t sure of that.  Not that Steve didn’t have a plan or know what he was doing, but that SHIELD would let him escape.  Steve was many things (overly noble and loyal to a fault among them), but stupid he was not.  He’d taken a risk, gambled his own safety, to give Natasha a chance to escape.  She knew that.  And she knew he’d been acutely aware of what was at stake when he’d left them to draw the STRIKE Team away.  She was sure he hadn’t trusted SHIELD enough to turn himself over to them and hope they’d let him go when they discovered he didn’t have the drive on him.  He’d had some sort of way to buy Sam and Natasha time.  But if the cost had been his life…

Natasha clenched her hand over her pants pocket.  The USB stick was in there still, and she breathed a small sigh of relief.  It felt like she was carrying the weight of the world.  Literally. _“Take this to Stark_.  _Don’t let them get their hands on it no matter what.  You hear me?  No matter what.  Don’t come for me until you get this to Tony.”_   Those had been orders, plain as day.  Orders from Captain America.  Orders from her partner.  _“This is the only way.  The only way to keep you and that drive safe.  That’s the only thing that matters.”_

The anger came.  Who was he to do this?  Who was he to decide what mattered?  To decide whose life was more important?  She wasn’t used to this kind of pain, to this crippling worry, but in all honesty, she should have been.  He’d done this before.  He’d made sacrifices like this for her before.  _“I love you.  And I’ll be okay.  I promise.”_   Natasha closed her eyes against the sting of tears.  She was better than this.  Better than her fear and her grief and her worry.  Steve knew what he was doing.  He’d made the right choice, the logical choice, no matter how difficult it’d been for him.  They all would have been arrested then and there if he hadn’t surrendered himself.  She had to trust him as her partner as she used to without all this added trauma of her emotions.  She had to separate how much she loved and needed him from the mission, and the mission was to get that USB drive to Stark before SHIELD got its hands on it.  This was truly the first time she _had_ to do that, to pull her heart back and put it in a cage that she now despised and feared.  She needed that cold distance, that objective apathy, that willingness to do whatever it took to see her directives fulfilled.  She needed to be Black Widow again, not Steve Rogers’ lover.

She wasn’t sure she could be.

The driver’s door opened.  Natasha snapped from her thoughts, tightening her hand on the gun again, but it was Sam.  He slid into the driver’s seat, his hair and clothes wet with drizzle from outside.  Natasha glanced at the clock in the dashboard of the car.  It was almost lunchtime, and as though it was angry for being neglected, her stomach rumbled loudly.  She hadn’t had anything to eat since the afternoon before.

Sam seemed to anticipate that.  He handed Natasha a gray plastic bag, and there were sandwiches and chips and a couple bottles of Gatorade in it.  “How’s the leg?” he asked, glancing at her wounded thigh.  They’d pulled over at a gas station and taken a minute a couple of hours ago to redress the bullet hole in fresh bandages.  Running around on it had hurt, but it wasn’t anything she couldn’t take.

“It’s fine,” she said, maybe more curtly than she intended.  Sam had done nothing but help.  She was grateful, but it was so much easier to hide everything behind a veil of detachment than face how afraid she was.  She pulled a bottle of Gatorade from the bag and drank half of it before she even tasted it.  “Did you get it?”

Sam had drained his bottle in a few seemingly gigantic gulps.  “Yeah.”  He reached into another bag and pulled out a disposable smart phone.  They were parked outside of a Walmart somewhere northwest of Baltimore in the suburbs.  Stopping again had been a risk, but they had to take it.  Sam was already working on getting the phone out of the packaging.  “Hopefully this thing comes charged, but I bought a car charger, just in case.  You know his number?”

“Yes.”  She hoped so, at any rate.  She didn’t dare turn on her own cell phone to look up Stark’s phone number, not with SHIELD likely monitoring all of the major mobile service carriers.  Her SHIELD-issued phone she’d activated and then tossed out the window somewhere south of DC while they’d been meandering around the city outskirts trying to hide their tracks.  It might have distracted SHIELD for a bit if Pierce was searching for them, but she doubted it would do much more than that.

After finally getting the new phone free of the ridiculous amount of plastic encasing it, Sam powered it on.  “We’re in business,” he murmured gratefully.  “Here.  You deal with this.  I’m going to get us moving.”

Natasha didn’t argue, stuffing the rest of her sandwich in her mouth as she took the phone from him.  She chewed and swallowed.  It tasted like nothing.  Nothing felt good or sure or _anything_.  _Get to Stark.  Then we can get Steve out of there._   As Sam turned the car back on, the wipers lazily moving across the rain-slicked windshield, she allowed herself a moment of grief.  She didn’t really have a choice, because it came randomly and fast and hard.  Her hands shook.  Her eyes burned.  Her heart swelled miserably in her chest until it felt like it was lodged in her throat.  God, she was scared.

“They won’t kill him,” Sam softly said.  He glanced her way as he maneuvered them back onto a busier divided highway.  They’d only spent a few panicked hours together, but already Natasha had discovered Sam to be rather good at reading people.  And he was of a good stock.  He was kind-hearted, stalwart, smart, and capable.  He reminded her of Steve in a lot of ways.  No wonder they’d hit it off so well and so quickly.  “They won’t.  They need him.”

“I know,” she responded softly once she found her voice.  Sam meant what he said as a source of comfort, but she didn’t find any solace in it.  Truthfully, as much as the idea made her positively sick with grief and anger, she was afraid they wouldn’t kill Steve.  She was afraid of what they’d do to him to get that drive back.  She knew Steve would never betray that he’d given it to her.  But that only meant they’d try harder to break him.  She couldn’t bear to think about it.  SHIELD had its hands in some dirty things, bad and immoral things if she was honest with herself.  If the good people there – like Fury and Hill and Clint and herself – hadn’t been afraid to get their hands dirty to stop evil, what would the truly evil people do to stop good?  _Rumlow.  Pierce._

_The Winter Soldier._

And Clint.  She’d left him behind.  He was trapped in the Triskelion.  By now, he could be a prisoner, too.  If SHIELD had been taken over by Pierce’s faction, there was no telling what could happen to him.  Natasha couldn’t bear to even contemplate any of it.  She grabbed the prepaid card from the bag and focused on getting the phone working.  A few minutes later as Sam drove them through the rainy day away from Baltimore, she was dialing in Stark’s number.  After the Battle of New York, he’d given each of the Avengers his private line, which he claimed no one else used.  He called it some sort of emergency Avengers channel.  To her knowledge, at least, none of them had ever dialed it.  At least she, Clint, and Steve hadn’t.  She knew Steve had kept up some sort of contact with Stark, but she didn’t think they were what anyone would call close.  Friends, maybe.  Still, Steve was right about Tony.  He hated SHIELD, distrusted it and openly berated it.  He was their best hope for help.  So she hit the “SEND” button on the phone, hoping and praying that this paid off.

It rang and rang.  _Come on,_ Natasha thought, growing more and more worried with each passing second that Stark didn’t answer.  It would be much easier to make this journey up to New York with Stark’s aid.  _If he’s even in New York._   The guy owned the biggest and most profitable technology company in the world.  She knew Stark’s mansion in Malibu had been destroyed a few months ago during the incident with the Mandarin, but Stark Industries’ headquarters were still out in California.  Maybe he was there.  Really he could be anywhere.  The phone was still ringing.  _Come on!_

It was useless.  “Damn it,” Natasha growled, pulling the phone from her ear and ending the call.

“Does that mean he’s not there?” Sam asked, glancing over at her.

“I don’t know,” she answered.  “Stark’s…”  How could one explain Tony Stark to someone who had (and, had circumstances not gone this inexplicable way, probably would have) never met him?  He was brilliant, flashy, and eccentric.  He was powerful, but had a good heart, and caustic when it suited him (which was all the time, practically).  He was rude but loyal, fumbling, reliable in some ways and completely irresponsible in others.  He was a walking, talking contradiction.  He was… “… flighty.”

Sam wasn’t pleased.  “Great.”

Natasha thought for a moment and opened the phone’s text messaging program.  She quickly typed in a message: _“SHIELD compromised.  Need your help.  Coming to Tower.”_   She hesitated just a moment before sending it.  That tense sensation of paranoia was growing worse and worse, even more so now that Steve was gone.  She had to take the chance.  If Stark knew they needed aid, the odds of them reaching safety were significantly higher.

“Shit,” Sam breathed, drawing Natasha’s attention.  The car slowed.  Sam shook his head.  “Fucking perfect.  Construction?”

Natasha peered along the long line of cars ahead.  Most of the road in front of them was at a standstill, red taillights turned into blurry, streaky patterns by the rain on the windshield.  She saw brighter blobs of color ahead.  Red and blue.  “Accident.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah, we need to get off.  Turn around.”  There was no way they could risk this.  An accident meant police, and if they got deeply into the mess of the traffic ahead, there would be no escape.  Sam gripped the steering wheel tighter, unnerved and a tad panicked.  He flipped on the blinker to move into the right lane, glancing wildly over his shoulder.  He pushed their way in, and fortunately no one honked at them.  “Easy,” Natasha warned quietly.  “Don’t look desperate.”

“You think the cops are watching?” Sam asked nervously, though the tension eased from his form enough for Natasha to notice.

“First rule about going on the run: there’s always someone watching,” Natasha responded coolly.  They inched forward in the traffic a little more, crawling closer to the flashing lights ahead.  It was uncomfortable and disconcerting, but there really wasn’t a choice.  Further ahead there was an intersection and the opportunity to turn right.  Sam took Natasha’s advice and signaled his next lane change but waited more patiently to squeeze into the adjacent line of cars.  They sat silently, tensely, while they slowly made their way to the turn.  Every moment felt like one in which they would be discovered.  Every moment they were trapped, waiting and waiting.  Finally they were able to escape the traffic jam.

Sam sighed in relief, though he still kept checking in the mirror and glancing over his shoulder to see if they were being followed.  “Well, this is great.  You know the traffic heading north is going to be bad.  How are we going to avoid all of it without this taking forever?”  She didn’t have an answer.  Steve couldn’t afford for them to spend so much time reaching Manhattan.  They were both quiet again, suffering with their unspoken worries.  Sam drove them aimlessly around the shopping areas for a few minutes, futilely trying to get his bearings.  “That thing have GPS on it?  Because I don’t know how to get around this.”

She found the GPS app on the phone and launched it.  She typed in their destination, choosing Grand Central Station as opposed to Stark Tower itself just in case SHIELD was watching.  The app was quick to calculate the best route, though she had to alter it to exclude major highways.  And then she stopped.

What was it Steve had said?  About the USB drive being linked to a bunch of different locations?  He’d seen it aboard the _Lemurian Star_ , the log of places the drive had been.  39-23’17” North, 075-19’51” West.  Her heart speeding in excitement, she canceled the route the computer had calculated and entered in the new coordinates.  The place wasn’t that far, surprisingly enough.  It was only about an hour and a half out of the way.  “Change of plans,” she declared.

“What?” Sam asked breathlessly.  “What do you mean?”  She lifted the phone so he could see the screen.  “Wheaton, New Jersey?  What the hell?  What’s in Wheaton, New Jersey?”

“Answers.”

* * *

It took some convincing to get Sam to agree to this.  Frankly, Natasha was hardly certain herself that this was a good plan.  This was a detour they didn’t have the time (or freedom) to take.  Steve had sent them to New York, to Tony, and they needed to get to him.  That was what Sam intended to do.  He meant to get the drive and Natasha to safety.  They’d argued about that, of course, that it wasn’t Steve’s job to take care of her, so it certainly wasn’t Sam’s, and if Steve asked Sam to do that sometime during the night she’d been hurt, they both needed to stuff their chauvinistic bullshit and let her make her own decisions.  And her decision was to take an hour and go to this place in the backwoods of New Jersey that had something to do with the USB drive.  It was bordering on rush hour, anyway, and they had no idea if the path to Manhattan was clear.  If SHIELD was anticipating their attempt to reach Stark, getting further north was going to be more and more difficult.  Therefore, it seemed like this was as good a time as any to try this.  They had a chance to learn _something_ about what was on the drive, and she couldn’t pass that up.

She just hoped she was right about this.  She was spending the precious time Steve had given her.  She hoped to God it would be worth it.

It had stopped raining by the time they reached Wheaton.  Sam drove down a quiet road in the woods, following the GPS on the phone.  Natasha grew more and more anxious by the moment, not recognizing at all where they were.  She was familiar with most of the major SHIELD installations on the East Coast, and to her knowledge, there was nothing out here.  They were literally in the middle of nowhere.  They continued in uncomfortable silence for another ten minutes or so, the road changing from pavement to gravel, not terribly unkempt but not well marked or maintained, either.  Eventually the forest thinned, parting to reveal what looked like some sort of old military base.

Sam slowed the car to a stop outside the fence.  Natasha got out as he turned it off, tucking the gun in the waistband of her pants below her sweatshirt and shutting the door behind her.  Together she and Sam walked toward the sealed gate.  Sam had a confused expression on his face.  “What is this place?”

An old, weathered sign was affixed to the top of the fence.  White letters proclaimed “CAMP LEHIGH – US ARMY RESTRICTED AREA”.  Natasha’s brow furrowed in confusion.  Was it just a coincidence?  It had to be.  “It’s where they developed the super soldier program,” she said in soft voice.

Sam looked sufficiently doubtful.  “You’re kidding.  Are you sure?”

“Yeah.”  She’d seen it in some of the old SSR files Steve had in his apartment.  This was where SSR and Doctor Abraham Erskine had gathered candidates from across the country for the controversial and barely funded program.  They’d trained them, tested them, evaluated them to find the best fit, the most likely chance for success.  And Steve had been the one they’d chosen out of dozens of options.  Steve, the scrawny, skinny kid from Brooklyn.

This had to be a mistake, right?  What the hell did data from a pirate ship on the other side of the world have to do with an army base from seventy years ago?

Sam scaled the fence without too much trouble.  On the other side, he opened the padlock and pulled the gate open with a grunt of effort and screech of rusted metal.  Natasha nodded her thanks and stepped inside.  The base was dark with the gloomy day, the compacted dirt of the road and paths wet and muddy beneath their feet.  Brush left to grow unattended had overrun a lot of the training areas.  The buildings that weren’t brick had turned gray, covered in faded and peeling paint and one step better than dilapidated.  It looked like no one had set foot there in decades.  It was so quiet, ghostly almost.  As Natasha walked around a corroded flag pole, she looked up and imagined the American flag waving in the breeze.  She imagined the voices of drill sergeants, harsh and loud as they directed the recruits.  She imagined the thudding of boots on dry earth, the jingling of gear as soldiers ran in formation.  And she imagined Steve as she’d seen him at the Smithsonian exhibit, small and thin and nearly crushed under the weight of equipment and a rifle too big for him, wearing the greens of the US Army.  Steve was struggling to keep up, and the drill sergeant was screaming at him in ire.  Somebody else would have quit given the insurmountable obstacles, but Steve was still running after the company, running and running and _fighting_ …

“You sure this has something to do with that drive?” Sam asked, drawing her from her thoughts.

Natasha sighed, subconsciously sticking her hand into her pocket to clench the small device firmly.  “Steve has an eidetic memory.  If he said these were the coordinates, then they’re the coordinates.”

They wandered around a moment more, but there was nothing to be seen but shadows and overgrowth and more empty buildings.  This base had been abandoned long before USB technology even existed.  _What are we doing here?  Wasting time?_

“There’s nothing.  We should go,” Sam said.  He looked frustrated and disappointed.

Natasha wasn’t willing to give up yet.  Something – she didn’t know what – was bugging her about this place, a cool feeling of dread that was deep in the pit of her stomach.  “There has to be something,” she murmured, glancing around anew helplessly.

“How long have you and Steve been together?” Sam asked.

Natasha turned and stared at him sharply.  “What do you mean by that?”

Sam’s expression softened.  “He loves you.  A lot.  I asked him the other day what makes him happy, and you know what he said?  You.”  Natasha felt something cold and miserable wash over her, like a bucket of ice had been dumped on her head.  Suddenly this whole thing felt akin to betrayal.  Steve was in the hands of SHIELD, and they were doing who knew what to him, and she was out here, on a wild goose chase when she should be finding Stark and planning a rescue.  She should be honoring Steve’s wishes.

Sam pulled on a locked door to one of the buildings (the barracks it seemed), but it only rattled.  He shook his head.  “All I’m saying is what I said before.”  He didn’t seem irritated, just discouraged and worried.  “He told us to go to New York.  We should go.  It’s all we can do to help him now.”

Natasha didn’t appreciate the thought process and the guilt and grief it was stirring to life inside her.  And she didn’t like wasting time arguing about this again.  “He also trusts me to make my own decisions.  We have to figure out what’s on this.”

“There’s nothing here,” Sam said again.  “We’re wasting time.  We need to…”  He trailed off, looking over Natasha’s shoulder.  Stepping around her, he went to a larger building set back some distance from the main thoroughfare of the base. 

Natasha followed him, perplexed.  “What?”

“I don’t know how it is in the army, but in the Air Force, it’s against regulations to have munitions stored so close to the barracks.”  He moved faster, jogging over to the darkened, hulking mass of a structure.  Natasha leapt to keep up.  She came to stand beside him, and they both looked up the building.  “This building shouldn’t be here.”  It was a dome of sorts that extended dozens of yards back.  The door was metal and secured with an old lock.  “Hold on.”  Sam disappeared for a moment, heading back to the car.  When he returned, it was with the tire iron.  He smashed that into the lock a few times.  Thankfully, it was rusted enough to give way, and he pulled the door open.

Inside, it was black.  They stood at the entrance a moment, wary and wondering.  Then Natasha stepped down along a metal staircase.  Sam followed.  The gray light from outside illuminated what was in front of them enough to see a few pillars flanking the lower level of the building.  There was a light switch on one, which Natasha flipped on once they got down there.  A second later, overhead lights winked to life, revealing a huge, dusty room filled with desks, chairs, and file cabinets.  The walls were painted beige, taupe, and pea green.  At the other end of the huge space, a massive logo of a black eagle encircled in gold adorned the vast majority of the wall.  Natasha recognized it instantly.  “This is SHIELD,” she said softly as the two of them wandered deeper into the old room.  _Probably where it started,_ she thought as she appraised the old emblem.

“Why would SHIELD have an installation here, out in the middle of nowhere?” Sam asked.

“SSR laid the groundwork for SHIELD during World War II,” Natasha answered. “If this was one of the places they were based during the war, it made sense to start from something well established and already secure.”  _And already secret._ They walked down the rows and rows of idle desks.  A hefty layer of dust and dirt coated everything.  There were old office supplies in some places, notebooks and pens and staplers, but things had tidied, packed, and put away before they’d been left.  Obviously the base had been decommissioned ages ago, and anything of value had been removed.

There were doors lining the sides of the main room, offices and storages places.  They wandered to the right and into one that had dusty, frosted windows separating it from the larger room.  File cabinets were pressed to the walls in neat, well-organized rows.  Above them there were three pictures.  “Who are they?” Sam asked.

“The people who founded SHIELD.  That’s Stark’s father,” Natasha said to the middle photo.  Howard Stark looked young and suave, in the prime of his life.  “And General Phillips, Steve’s CO during the war.”  She’d seen his picture in a few of the conference rooms in the Triskelion.  She always thought Phillips seemed ornery and world-weary.  He probably had been.  Natasha’s eyes drifted to the last portrait.  “And Peggy Carter.”  Carter was beautiful, raven-haired and pale-skinned with eyes that were sharp and bright.  She appeared every bit like the leader she had been.  Natasha couldn’t make herself look at the picture any longer, pain and shame digging through her heart.  That guilt swarmed like a plague of gnats, buzzing and battering her.  It was hardly rational, but she felt like she’d betrayed Carter.  She’d never even met Carter, so there was no way she owed the other woman anything.  But she couldn’t shake the feeling that what had happened and what was happening to Steve was her fault.  After all, she’d been the one to shoot him.  It had been for her sake that he’d gone after Brushov and fought the Red Guardian.  And it was for her sake now that he’d handed himself over to their enemies.

 _Shut up,_ she seethed to herself as she walked away.  This newfound bullshit that was her conscience really aggravated her sometimes.  Feeling guilty did nothing.  _Black Widow does not feel._   That was what she had been trained to do, fight and kill and complete her mission without hesitation or doubt, and she could still do it.  _Black Widow does not…_   No, she loved.  She loved far too deeply.

 _Shut up!_   This was neither the time nor the place.

She walked down the room a little, passing huge metal bookcases that were empty.  Cobwebs blanketed the shelves.  She peered down further but saw only more of the same, lonely workstations and useless shelves so coated in dust that it was more than obvious no one had used them in years.  No computers.  No modern technology, period.  It didn’t make sense.  Steve couldn’t have been wrong about the USB drive having something to do with this place, but whatever the relationship was wasn’t at all obvious.

But then she felt a burst of cool air from her left.  She turned and saw the webs embracing the adjacent bookshelf shimmy and waver in what was definitely a draft from some place behind it.  “Sam, look at this.”

Sam came closer, his eyes narrowed as he waved a hand in front of the cool air pushing into the room.  He crouched to inspect the bottom of the bookshelf.  “It’ll move.  It’s on a track.”

“Help me.”  They managed to push their fingers between that rack and the next.  Prying deeper, they widened the small gap.  Once they had it parted a few inches, they were able to put more effort and weight into it, pushing the heavy bookshelf along the floor with a rattle and the grating sound of grinding metal.  It obviously hadn’t been moved in a while if its resistance was any indication.  A few more seconds of their combined work had the bookshelf pushed far enough over that they could slip past it into the hallway hidden behind it.

“If you’re already working in a secret office,” Sam said softly, staring at the sealed doors at the end of the short, dark corridor, “why do you need to hide the elevator?”

“Sometimes secrets have secrets.”  Sam gave a wan look at the blithe comment as she examined the keypad at the elevator door.  It was antiquated.  For a moment she regretted tossing her SHIELD-issue phone out of the car; it had tools in it that would have made getting past this a snap.  But hindsight was twenty-twenty, and she still wasn’t sure booting it up would have been a good idea.  _Maybe none of this is a good idea._   It was moot now.  And she could handle the keypad without tech.  “See if one of those desks back there has a letter opener.”

Sam tipped his head, puffing out his cheeks with an incredulous breath, but he went out to find what she needed.  When he came back, Natasha used the opener to pry the top of the keypad off.  She figured whatever security system this was jacked into was probably long disabled since there weren’t any alarms going off.  “You know what you’re doing?” Sam asked as he watched over her shoulder.  She gave him a withering look.  “Right.”  He observed her work in silence for a moment.  “Never been much for spook shit, but it is pretty cool.  And useful.”

“Sometimes.  But sometimes the old ways are best.”

“Steve rubbing off on you?”

 _More than you know._ With a few more seconds, Natasha had the keypad hotwired.  The doors slid open, and they stepped inside.  There was only one button, and it went down.  Sam hesitated a second before pressing it.  The door closed, and the elevator started to descend.  “This is creepy.”

She drew a deep breath to steel herself as the elevator slowed to a stop.  The double doors opened with a ding, revealing another large, blackened room beyond.  The illumination of the elevator hinted at equipment filling the place.  They hesitated a moment, sharing a concerned glance, before stepping out.  The elevator doors sealed behind them with a gentle clank.  As they went deeper into the shadows beyond, an array of lights became visible.  It was buttons on a console, red and white and some were flashing.  Abruptly the room lights switched on, the sound of fluorescent bulbs charging to life filling the tense silence.  Greenish illumination flooded the room, revealing a huge space packed with neatly ordered rows of old computers.  Extremely old computers.  Natasha had never seen tech like this, tall cases filled with rolls of magnetic tape for data storage.  It had to be from the 60’s or the 70’s, back when building a computer with a fraction of the power of the cell phone in her pocket took an entire room.

There was a central console ahead where those buttons were, and it featured a few larger screens as well as a really old video camera affixed to the center monitor.  Sam and Natasha stepped up on the dais where the console was, looking around in surprise and confusion.  “The drive couldn’t have come from here,” Natasha said, trying to make heads or tails of this.  “This technology is ancient.”

She was forced to reconsider.  On the dusty console was a sleek USB hub, the ports glowing blue.  It was hardwired into the console.  On the side of the device, the manufacturer was stamped in white lettering.  WorldCom.  That didn’t make sense.  WorldCom was a telecom contractor for SHIELD, but what would they have to do with this old building?  She reached into her pocket and pulled the USB drive free.  Sam saw her considering it and came closer.  “You sure you want to do this?”

“No,” she answered truthfully, “but we’ve come this far.”  Tony was an expert hacker and computer programmer.  Still, she didn’t know if he’d be able to break whatever encryption was on the drive.  Booting it up was a definite risk; the computer system here was decades all and definitely predated the internet, so the homing program placed on there by SHIELD probably wouldn’t function.  But there was no way to be sure.  _We need to know what’s on here.  We need to know what Pierce wants._

_I need to know what Steve surrendered himself to protect._

She pushed the drive into the port.  Immediately the machines in the room came to life, buttons and lights flashing everywhere, the tape reels within the computers whirring into motion.  They both looked around, surprised at the sheer amount of activity from the once idle equipment.  The camera mounted on the main monitor jerked, elevating its lens slightly.  On the computer terminal, a prompt appeared accompanied by a computerized voice.  “Initiate system?”

Natasha turned, her brow furrowing in surprise.  This was like something out of a science fiction movie.  Sam glanced around worriedly.  “I don’t feel good about this,” he admitted.

She didn’t either, but it was too late to go back now.  She leaned over and typed “yes” on the old keyboard.  She hesitated again before tapping “ENTER”.  Once she did, the rows and rows of machines surrounding them moved faster and louder.  The camera tilted, turned, and focused on Sam.  The large screen was suddenly filled with faint green lines.  They were distorted, flickering as though it was only static for a moment, but Natasha realized quickly that it wasn’t.  It was a _face_ of some sort, grotesque and disturbing with huge, circular glasses.  A male voice, nasal and heavily accented, came from the console.  It was loaded with distortion, feedback, and an odd echo, but it still sounded disturbingly human.  “Wilson, Samuel Thomas.  Born 1978.”  The camera slowly rotated to face Natasha.  “Romanoff, Natalia Alianovna.  Born 1984.”

“This can’t be real,” Sam breathed, increasingly on edge.

Natasha shook her head.  “It’s got to be a recording.”  However, even as she said, she knew that wasn’t possible.

“I am not a recording, _fräulein_ ,” the voice responded almost flippantly.  “I may not appear to the man I was when your dear captain took me prisoner in 1945, but I am.”

 _Dear captain…_   “What the hell,” Sam breathed.  On one of the other monitors, a picture of a small man with a large, round head appeared.  He wore spectacles over two beady, closely placed eyes.  He was balding in the image, and the image itself looked decades old.  Natasha didn’t recognize him.  Sam clearly didn’t, either.  “Who are you?”

“My name is Doctor Arnim Zola.  I was _Herr_ Schmidt’s most trusted advisor and most brilliant scientist,” the voice supplied. 

“Who’s that?” Sam asked, bewildered.

Natasha’s mind was racing.  _Schmidt._ “The Red Skull,” she murmured, alarmed beyond belief.  She shook her head, struggling for an explanation to this.  “But that’s impossible.  Steve killed him.  He’s been dead for years, and so have you.”

“Incorrect.  Look around you.  I have never been more alive.”  This wasn’t real.  It couldn’t be.  The magnetic tapes spun around them, some in concert, some seemingly randomly.  It was dizzying.  It was _impossible._ “In 1972, I received a terminal diagnosis.  Science could not save my body.  My mind, however, _that_ was worth saving on two hundred thousand feet of databank.  You are standing in my brain.”

The imagery was decidedly unpleasant.  “How did you get here?” Sam asked.

Suddenly it made sense.  Natasha narrowed her eyes, glancing around the room again.  “Operation: Paperclip,” she whispered.  God, Garanin had been right from the beginning.  Right to be afraid.  Right to warn her.  The shadows in plain sight were the easiest to overlook.  Sam looked at her helplessly, not understanding.  “After World War II, SHIELD recruited German scientists with strategic value.”  _Tell me this isn’t…  It can’t be…_

“They thought I could help their cause,” the voice explained.  “I also helped my own.”

 _It’s not true!_ “HYDRA was destroyed with the Red Skull decades ago,” Sam insisted.  “Captain America defeated you.”

“Cut off one head…”  The image hideously split on the screen before them into two identical parts.  “…and two more shall take its place.”  The silence that followed was tense with shock and fear.  Sam was watching her, waiting for her reaction, waiting to _know_ if this could be true.  Natasha had a feeling it was.  She didn’t know what to say or do or even think, but she had a sinking suspicion that everything Garanin had said was right.  And if that was the case, then _this_ – Fury’s death and Steve’s capture and SHIELD falling apart…  It had all been inevitable in a way that was cruel and cutting.  That didn’t make it easier to accept.  “You seem doubtful, Black Widow.  Allow me to convince you.  Accessing archives.”

The monitor to the right of the main one flickered to life, and a slew of images appeared.  The first was of a man dressed in a Nazi uniform.  It had to be Schmidt.  “HYDRA was founded on the belief that humanity could not be trusted with its own freedom.”  The images switched to grainy video of HYDRA’s troops saluting their leader, thousands and thousands of them.  “What we did not realize was if you try to take that freedom, humanity resists.”  More pictures and videos bombarded them.  Images of the Red Skull plastered upon posters.  Scenes of battle.  And Captain America, leading the Allied troops against the Nazis.  “Humanity rallies behind its symbols.  Behind its heroes.  Still, the war taught us much.  We discovered that humanity needed to surrender its freedom willingly.  After the war, SHIELD was founded, and I was recruited.”  Peggy Carter and Howard Stark appeared.  The two of them stood in the very office they had found upstairs with its outdated logo.  The other monitor flanking the central one switched on, displaying pictures of Zola as he’d been integrated into SHIELD’s resources.  “The new HYDRA grew, a beautiful parasite, inside of SHIELD.  As the nature of war changed and surged into new frontiers defined by technology, SHIELD’s reliance upon that technology quickly became consuming.  I positioned myself in an advantageous location within WorldCom, distant enough from my old enemies to engage in my own activities with little threat of discovery.”

“That’s not–”

“It is possible.  SHIELD was desperate enough to get ahead of distant threats that it foolishly ignored the enemies closest to it.”  There were pictures now of Zola working at computers.  Zola working at laboratory benches.  Zola with his hands in everything.  “For seventy years, HYDRA has been secretly feeding crisis from within SHIELD.  Reaping wars.”  Chaos.  Conflicts in the Middle East.  In the Balkans.  In Asia.  The stock market crashing.  Riots in the streets.  Violence and death and dissension.  The major moments in the last seven decades that had shaped and strained and twisted international relations…  It was all because of HYDRA.  “And when history did not cooperate, it was rewritten.”

The Winter Soldier in Dallas in 1963.  In Memphis in 1968.  In India and Russia and Iran.  The murder of foreign dignitaries and financial leaders and men of political influence.  Dozens of them over the last fifty years.  Black Widow in Budapest.  Hawkeye in Afghanistan.  _Oh, God…_   “SHIELD would have stopped you,” she said, but her voice was meek and uncertain.

“Not when SHIELD itself is a weapon of HYDRA,” Zola said.  “Not when SHIELD itself is an agent of anarchy.”  Images of Howard Stark, switching hideously to the identical shot with his eyes and mouth blacked out as though it had been done with marker.  Newspaper stories proclaiming “Howard and Maria Stark Die in Car Accident”.  Fury, shot and killed.  Captain America, dead.  Steve’s face on the cover of a magazine.  “The Hero Who Sacrificed Everything”.  The text was in blaring red, stamped over his face.  “HYDRA created a world that is so chaotic that humanity is finally ready to sacrifice its freedom to gain its security.”  The monitor was filled with surveillance cameras, with biometric scanners, with satellites tracking, cataloging, and storing the whereabouts of every human being on earth.  Cell phones and PDAs and GPS systems, all feeding security agencies like SHIELD with personal information.  The blind eye of its complacent victims.  “Once the purification process is complete, HYDRA’s new world order will arise.  You lose everything, and we win.”

This wasn’t happening.  HYDRA inside of SHIELD.   _HYDRA_.  The same HYDRA that had tried to destroy the world during World War II.  The same HYDRA that Steve had defeated seventy years ago.  “Still in denial?” Zola questioned.  “You did not believe that the sacrifice of a single man could stop us, did you?”

Terrified and shaken to her core, Natasha lost her patience.  “What’s on this drive?”

“The answer to that question is intriguing.  But I won’t tell you.  You should not have come here, Black Widow,” Zola said.

“What?  Why?”

“I’m afraid I’ve been stalling.  It’s too late to escape now.  And it’s too late to stop what has been put in motion.”

“Natasha, we need to go,” Sam said stiffly.  He back toward the elevator door.  “ _Now_.” 

Natasha wasn’t prepared to let this go.  It felt like the world was ending on top of her, and she had to know why.  “What’s on this drive?” she demanded again, walking closer to the camera.  “What?”

Zola’s image wavered.  “HYDRA wants Captain America dead, and he will die.  This time we will make certain of it,” the voice swore.  That image of Steve, his SHIELD ID photo, was on the screen again.  This time it was his eyes and mouth that had the black marker on them.  Blinded and silenced.  Crossed off.  _Eliminated._ Natasha could barely stand to look at it.  “He is incorruptible.  The war taught us that, as well.  However, you are not.  You wish to know what it is you have in your possession?  Project: Insight requires insight.  Your past dictates your future.  And in the end, it’s you we want.”

A chill wracked its way up Natasha’s back.  “Me?”

“You, and what Captain America has given you.”

 _The drive._   Sam had obviously come to the same conclusion.  He moved faster than Natasha, Natasha whose mind was falling and falling down into an icy, _useless_ horror.  He grabbed the drive and yanked it free of the port.  Just as he did, though, the lights in the room went out, and they were plunged into complete darkness.

Natasha could barely breathe.  She whirled, but in the utter pitch it was dizzying and disorienting, and panic rose up inside her.  She heard Sam’s rushed gasps, shallow and almost panicked, beside her.  She reached out blindly and grabbed his arm just to assure herself that he was there.  “Shit,” he whispered.  “Now what?”

A loud rattle echoed through the room.  Natasha reached for her gun, but in the darkness there was no way to tell where to point it.  The noise dissipated for a moment, leaving them gasping and scrambling in the shadows.  “Get behind this,” Natasha ordered softly, and together they fumbled to hide on the other side of the main console.  The rumble came again, and this time there was the distinctive sounds of the elevator moving down the shaft.  Natasha gripped the gun tighter, her back pressed to the console.  Sam was rigid beside her.  It had to be SHIELD.  HYDRA.  It didn’t matter.  Their enemies were coming for them, and they were trapped.

This had been a pretty serious mistake.

Eventually the elevator dinged, and the doors opened.  Natasha held her breath, straining her ears.  There were footsteps, soft and well-trained but not quite silent.  Maybe a dozen of them.  She had no evidence of it, but she knew it was the STRIKE Team.  Who else would Pierce send to bring the USB drive back to them?  She hoped Sam realized that they couldn’t get that drive, no matter what.  She nudged Sam gently, but he had already shifted into a crouch to be ready to attack.  The footsteps came deeper into the room.  Natasha angled herself around to peer over the top of the console.  _Damn it._   The neon green light of a slew of night-vision goggles bobbled on the other side of the room.  Her heart started to pound.  They couldn’t use the darkness to hide.  It was only a matter of time before the STRIKE Team found them.

“I know you’re here, Romanoff.”  Rumlow’s smug voice cut through the tense and heavy silence.  The minute rustling of clothes, the shifting of guns, and the widespread soft thudding of boots suggested the STRIKE Team was fanning out.  Searching.  “Why don’t you just surrender and make this easier on everyone?”

 _Like hell._   She didn’t care what the odds were.  She’d been in situations like this before, and she’d escaped.  And Sam wasn’t going to be dead weight; he was military, so he knew how to handle himself in a combat situation.  They weren’t going to go down without a fight.  She slipped into that cold place inside her, where her emotions couldn’t reach her, and stayed relaxed.  She knew how the STRIKE Team fought from the dozens of missions she’d done with them.  They were brute force, more muscle than brain, and if they thought they were coming from a position of strength, that would likely make them sloppy.  “Come on.  We just want that USB drive.  You’re outnumbered and outgunned.  There’s no one coming to save you.”

They were getting closer now.  Rumlow sounded like he was right on the other side of the console in the middle of the room.  There was definitely someone else beside him, and the rest of the team seemed further away, probably checking through the rows and rows of databanks.  “I think your boyfriend misses you,” Rumlow sneered.  “Seeing you might make him feel better.”  _Don’t listen._   The cool voice of reason sliced across the storm of fury and fear mounting in her mind.  She needed to clamp down on her feelings.  “Dumb fuck thinks he can protect you, but he’s not going to last.  The Winter Soldier’s working him over now.  Doing a real number on him.  There isn’t going to be much left by the time he’s done.  The guy’s brutal.  A real vicious son of a bitch.  Rogers’ll break, sure as day.”  Sam stiffened, and Natasha squeezed her eyes shut.  _Oh, God.  Steve…_   She should have never let him walk away from her.  And she should have told him the truth about Barnes.  “You can save him if you just come with us.  Don’t you want to save him?  You don’t want his pain and suffering on your pretty conscience, do you?”  Rumlow grunted.  “But, then, it already is.  You shot him in the heart.”  Natasha stiffened.  She could feel Sam’s shock and revulsion beside her like it was a potent force battering her.  She felt naked, exposed.  Afraid.  _Don’t listen!_ “I gotta tell you: for a minute back there in Crimea, I almost thought you were on our side and nobody had told me.  You still could be, you know.  There’s always room for more.  And maybe that would finally get it through Rogers’ thick skull that you aren’t anything but a slut with a gun sold to the highest bidder.”  Rumlow chuckled.  “I guess the sex must have been really good for him to come crawling back to you after what you did.  The look on his face if you show up on our side now…  Damn, it’d be priceless.”  He laughed again, but it was tense.

Natasha gritted her teeth.  They were coming around the console now.  In a minute, they’d find her and Sam.  In a minute, any advantage she and Sam had would vanish.  Rumlow sighed in frustration at her silence.  “Come on, Romanoff.  Don’t make me come get you.”

Natasha attacked.  She stood up from behind the console, firing her gun in the direction she thought Rumlow was.  Her shot struck true, probably hitting him in his combat vest and failing to do any real damage, but the shock was enough to buy her a second or two.  She darted to the left, ignoring the agony in her thigh, and lashed out at the STRIKE agent closest to her.  He was surprised by her attack, and she disarmed him easily, snatching his rifle in her hands.  She wasted no time, firing blindly ahead of her into the darkness.  The muzzle blast from the gun illuminated the room in quick, harsh blinks, not enough to really see anything.  She unloaded the magazine relentlessly, hoping to take down as many of them as she could.  When the gun was spent, she tossed it and grabbed her handgun anew, diving to the ground to avoid the return fire.  She saw the faint outline of Sam, grappling with another of the STRIKE Team while she scrambled for cover.  Bullets struck the floor around them, smashing into concrete, and the monitors above them shattered.  She had no idea if she’d killed any of them.  Hopefully she had.

But there was still no way to see.  And they were no closer to the door.

Natasha heard more than saw the knife slice at her.  She rolled away, grimacing as fiery pain shot up her leg.  She scrambled off the dais and onto the floor, but someone grabbed her ankle, yanking her back.  She barely rolled in time to block a strike to her head.  An iron grip latched around her wrist with the gun, smashing it against the floor until her fingers went limp with pain.  Natasha kicked blindly, immensely relieved at the feeling of her sneakers striking something firm, and crawled away.  “Sam?” she called frantically, her gaze darting through the darkness but finding nothing.  There was no answer except grunts and the sound of flesh smashing into flesh.  She prayed Sam was okay, that he was alive.  A whiz through the air alerted her to another attack, and she barely got out of the way of the knife in time.  She heard a cry of pain that had to be Sam’s, and she kicked again, aiming for the green blur of a pair of night vision goggles.  Her foot hit nothing.  Growling in increasing terror and frustration, Natasha shouted, “Sam!”

Someone tackled her.  She fell hard, her elbows and forearms barely coming forward in time to prevent herself from ramming into the floor.  She struggled with expertly placed blows despite her inability to see, a knee to a midriff, a hand around a throat.  The heavy form above her grunted in pain, snatching one of her wrists and pinning it.  Natasha punched her attacker, her hand striking what she thought was his jaw.  She finally succeeded in getting her knee between them, and she flung him over her.  Still, she barely had a chance to get onto her knees before a strong pair of arms wrapped around her from behind.  She clenched her teeth, struggling like a wildcat and trying to use the form behind her as leverage to spring forward and free herself.  She couldn’t.  This man restraining her had anticipated that maneuver, and held her tighter and tighter.

_No!  No!_

The lights suddenly flooded on, and Natasha squeezed her eyes shut and looked away in pain.  The STRIKE Team scattered in shock and alarm.  Natasha didn’t waste this opportunity, sinking her teeth into the arm around her chest.  The man behind her grunted, loosening his grip.  She spun, digging her fingers into his hand between his thumb and fingers, jabbing painfully at the nerves and muscles until he let go completely.  She elbowed him in the chest with hopefully enough force to knock him breathless.  It took only a twist and a yank to have him flung over her shoulder.  He collided with the back of the central console and slumped.

Natasha scooped up her discarded handgun and spun lithely, pointing it at the head of the agent she’d knocked down.  Familiar hazel eyes glared at her.  _Oh, no.  No, no, no.  Please!_ “Clint?” she whispered.

Clint said nothing, did nothing, for what felt to be forever.  He held her gaze, his eyes empty, _dead_ in a way she’d never seen before.  Uncaring.  Unapologetic.  “Give me the drive, Nat,” he ordered evenly.

“Not you,” she whispered.  Her eyes were wide, and her heart couldn’t seem to manage a steady beat.  “Not you.”

“Give it to me,” he ordered.  “Now.”

This wasn’t real.  She was delirious.  She was dreaming.  _This isn’t real!_   She heard herself whisper something.  “Why?”  Did it matter?  Did the reasons matter?  He’d betrayed her.  Her most stalwart supporter, a man who’d rescued her, guided her, protected her, advised her and stood with her…  She didn’t know him now.  She was staring into his eyes, but she didn’t see him.  There was nothing of the friend she loved, the confidant she trusted, the man who’d brought her into this life.  There was nothing!  _“Why?”_

“Barton!” Rumlow snapped, and Clint’s dead eyes flashed in warning.  He moved fast, faster than she could stop in her shocked stupor, knocking her hand aside.  A quick twist of his strong, capable fingers into her wrist disarmed her, and now he had the gun at her chest. 

Natasha was shivering.  She fought hard to keep still, but she couldn’t.  “Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” Clint said.  The gun was unwavering.  “If you surrender now, there’s a chance they’ll let Rogers live.  Rumlow wasn’t lying.  They’re torturing him.  And they’ll kill him to get what they want.”

_No!_

There was no time to even contemplate that.  The elevator exploded in a dazzling array of yellow and red and orange.  Natasha dropped to her hands and knees with the rush of heat and debris shoving over them.  Whatever modicum of coordination that might have existed among the STRIKE Team was completely destroyed as Iron Man, in all of his red and gold glory, levitated into the room through the remains of the elevator doors.  He dropped to the floor with a thud, his menacing blue eyes and arc reactor bright in the smoke and flickering lights.  His hard glare shifted around the room before finally landing on Natasha.  “You rang?”

Natasha gritted her teeth and moved fast, reaching for the gun as Clint reeled in alarm.  She heard Sam shout something, heard the distinctive sound of Iron Man’s mechanical joints moving and the repulsors charging and firing.  She buried everything: the pain, the worry and fear for Steve, the _anger_.  She buried it all and fought.  She held nothing back as she engaged Clint, delivering fast, hard blows and dizzying feints and powerful counters.  If it hadn’t been personal before, it was now.  He glared at her, meeting her move for move, but if he had the chance to best her, he didn’t take it.

And it went on for a few rushed seconds before Iron Man shot down the remains of the STRIKE Team.  Stark blasted Rumlow, who had Sam in a chokehold.  The bastard fell back into the rows of computers with a ragged cry.  Then Stark shot across the room and landed firmly between Clint and Natasha.  “What’s this?  Lover’s quarrel?”

The STRIKE Team was struggling to regroup and attack again, a few rounds from a rifle or two clanking uselessly against Tony’s armor.  Natasha ducked behind Tony, Sam scrambling toward her across the floor.  He’d been clipped by a bullet on one arm, and if his stilted movements were any evidence he had bruised or broken ribs.  His nose was bleeding.  “We need to get out of here!” he cried.

Stark kicked Clint back when the archer actually _attacked_ him.  “What the hell?” Tony muttered in alarm and worry.  He whirled, standing in coverage over Sam and Natasha.

“Stark!” Natasha shouted, grabbing firmly onto Sam’s arm.  “Light the place up!”

Tony didn’t need to be told twice.  He fired on the databanks, and Iron Man’s powerful weapons made short work of them.  Natasha watched in satisfaction for only a moment as Zola – or whatever it had been – was destroyed.  “Sam, do you have it?” she gasped, holding tighter to the man beside her.  Sam swallowed, watching Iron Man lay waste to the room in awe, before nodding.  “Then let’s go!  Stark!”

Under Tony’s protection, the two of them sprinted across the room.  The STRIKE Team was floundering, trying to regroup under Iron Man’s surprise attack, but it was difficult given parts of the room were burning at this point and now they were the ones who were woefully outgunned.  Stark followed Natasha and Sam, laying down a suppressing fire that kept the SHIELD agents hidden behind the intact consoles and machines.  At the elevator shaft, he turned to them, opening each arm.  “Up?”

Natasha nodded, stepping onto Iron Man’s boot and curling an arm around his waist.  Sam hesitated for just a second before doing the same.  “This is crazy,” he whispered.  “Holy shit.  This is crazy!”

“Welcome to the Avengers,” Stark smartly said.  “What about Hawkeye?  Do I want to know what the hell is going on here?”

Natasha bit her tongue until she tasted blood.  She glanced to the mess of flames behind them, the SHIELD agents still alive assembling to give pursuit.  Clint was there with Rumlow.  “Leave him,” she lowly declared.  There was hatred in her voice.  She didn’t make any effort to hide it.  “He’s chosen his side.”

Stark didn’t ask, didn’t demand an explanation.  He fired the rockets in Iron Man’s boots and blasted free.  He carried them up and away to safety.  “Has the world gone to hell?” he asked.  It didn’t matter if the question was rhetorical, because the answer was a pretty firm and devastating affirmation.  The world had gone to hell, and everything – _everyone_ – Natasha needed and loved was in terrible danger.  The past was never going to let them go.  _Never._ She closed her eyes, buried her face in the cool, hard metal of Iron Man’s shoulder, and tried her hardest not to cry.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _fräulein_ – miss (diminutive)  
>  _Herr_ – Sir (Lord)


	11. Chapter 11

_The end of the line._

Steve couldn’t breathe anymore.  He couldn’t fight anymore.  It hurt.  Everything hurt so badly.

_The end of the line.  This is it.  This is what it means._

“Tell me where the drive is.”  Bucky.  Not Bucky.  The Winter Soldier.  Harsh and vicious in his ear.  A hiss filled with malice and the intent to harm.  Pierce was wrong.  Natasha had been wrong, too.  Maybe the Winter Soldier was a machine, but he did feel.  He seemed to feel a hell of a lot.  Cold delight in causing pain.  Sadistic validation.  “Tell me.”

Steve whimpered.  The pain was overwhelming, crushing.  He was broken and bleeding.  The Winter Soldier had done this to him.  He could barely draw enough air into his lungs to speak, and when he did, it was nothing but a breathy whimper.  “Bucky, don’t…”

His tormentor had a knife now, and he was stabbing and slicing and cutting.  Steve had been tortured before.  Once, during the war, he and Bucky had been ambushed and surrounded during a reconnaissance mission to a HYDRA factory in Northern Italy.  One look at Bucky’s terror (terror over what had happened to him in Azzano only a few short months prior that he’d been trying so adamantly to hide) had been all Steve had needed to make his decision to stay behind and distract them while Bucky had made his escape.  _“I can’t let them take me, Steve.  I can’t go through that again.”_

_“You won’t.”_

_“We have to get out of here.”_

_“You run.  I’ll keep ’em busy.”_

_“No!”_

_“It’s the only way.  Find the others.  With any luck, I’ll only be a few hours behind you.”_

_“You fucking crazy?”_

_“Buck–”_

_“Christ, Steve, you can’t make me leave you–”_

“Where is the drive?”  The Winter Soldier had the knife to his throat now.  It was probably an empty threat ( _probably_ ) because they needed him alive for him to talk ( _because Bucky won’t do that to me_ ).  Steve had no idea how long this had been going on, but no amount of appealing or begging or trying to reach Bucky was making any difference.  And the Winter Soldier had a seemingly boundless reserve of patience.  He was cruel and exacting.  He knew what he was doing with that knife.  He knew how to torture.  What Steve had faced at the hands of the Nazis that night in Northern Italy had been sloppy and amateurish (God, that was sick) compared to this.  The Winter Soldier knew how to hurt, how to cut deeply enough to cause agony and the threat of death but never so deep as to actually kill.  He knew a man’s anatomy, where to slice and what to break.  Vaguely Steve felt like a piece of art, a canvas the Winter Soldier was painting with pain and blood, a lump of flesh he was trying to twist and mold into something he wanted to see.  No, that was too dignified for this.  That was too– “Where is it?”

“Rogers,” he gasped out, fighting to breathe with the blade poking in between his ribs.  “St-Steven, Grant.  Thr-three seven three…”  The air in his lungs and throat ran out, and his voice died.

 _“Stop talkin’, Stevie,”_ Bucky softly commanded.  _“Save your strength.”_   Bucky’s eyes were soft, his face filled with worry but the shadow of an encouraging smile as he leaned over him.  A gentle hand laid over Steve’s forehead.  _“He’s burnin’ up, Mrs. Rogers._ _What should we do?”_

_“Get the fever down from his head.”_

_“Hold on, Steve.  Help’s coming.”_

_Nat, help me…_   She couldn’t.  She needed to stay away, to not come anywhere near this nightmare.  Coming here would mean SHIELD won.  Coming here would mean she would be hurt like they were hurting him.  He couldn’t let that happen.  He was stronger than the pain.  He was stronger than the knife cutting into his body and the glare cutting into his soul.  He was stronger than–

“Where is the drive?  Where is it?”

Steve screamed.  The Winter Soldier had the blade in his flank now, digging and digging deeper and deeper.  Steve’s wail dissolved into a sob.  “Don’t,” he gasped.  “Bucky, please.  Please don’t do this.  Please listen to me.”

The knife came free with a spurt of hot red.  The blade flashed in the light before pressing to his cheek.  “No,” the Winter Soldier hissed.  His eyes flashed in frustration as he traced the edge of the knife down Steve’s face, almost gentle in its motion.  Steve forced his eyes open, forced himself to be still despite his terror, forced himself to _look_ into Bucky’s eyes.  He could picture Bucky so clearly; the image had danced among his dreams and nightmares continually ever since Bucky had fallen from that train in the Swiss Alps.  It all flashed before him now.  Bucky’s smile as they shared a beer they’d swiped from his father.  Bucky’s laugh as they’d wandered around Coney Island drinking pop and eating peanuts and looking at the dames in their flowery summer dresses.  Bucky’s encouraging hand as his mother had lain dying.  Bucky’s hug, firm and true, as he’d left Brooklyn to join the 107 th Infantry in Europe.  Bucky’s body, heavy and hurt against his as he’d hauled the two of them from the burning factory in Azzano.  Bucky’s hollow gaze, heavily lined with fear that he was trying to hide as the Howling Commandos made camp on a snowy night in Germany.  Bucky, at his side, his aim unwavering, his support even more so.  Bucky’s scream, loud and driving ice into Steve’s soul as he’d slipped from Steve’s stretching fingers and fell down, down into the wind and snow and ice.  Bucky, Bucky, Bucky…  Perverted.  Twisted.  _Gone._

 _No!_   “Please, Bucky,” Steve whispered.  The knife was slipping down his mostly naked body, down over his gasping throat and heaving chest.  “Please, Bucky.  It’s Steve.  Steve Rogers.  You need to remember.  You know me.  You’ve known me your whole life.”  The words barely came, halting and hitched with agony.  It was useless, pointless, and a small, horrified voice in the back of Steve’s mind kept telling him this.  But he couldn’t accept it.  He couldn’t believe it.  Bucky would never do this to him, so whatever Pierce had done to him…  Whatever HYDRA had done to him back during the war when he’d been a prisoner in Azzano…  Bucky had to be alive under the brainwashing.  _Bucky had to be._   “You know me, Buck.  Look at me.  Look me in the eye.  You know me.  You know–”

The knife went into him again.  He wasn’t sure where; his body was throbbing, every nerve tormented to beat in an endless, throbbing wave of fire and agony.  He heard himself screaming again, screaming until the metal fingers closed about his throat and squeezed.  Bucky’s face was completely expressionless as Steve gasped for air, as his life’s blood puddled on the floor beneath them.  “Where is the drive?”  The Winter Soldier hissed the words against Steve’s cheek.  “Where is it?  Where is it?”

Steve’s brain was ravaged, scraped raw and jumbled, but he held tight.  “Kill me…  Not gonna…  Won’t tell you.”

“Tell me.”

“Rogers, St-Steven.  Captain…”

“Tell me!”

_“Shut up now.  Come on.  What the hell are you thinking, trying to talk like this?  You need every breath you got.”_

“Bucky, please…  Please…”  _Please listen to me.  Please trust me.  Please believe me._

_“Please what?  You’re the one who keeps getting your ass kicked.”_

_Please stop._

He faded away somewhere between the Winter Soldier driving his boot up and into an open wound on his belly and that knife carving into his chest.  He closed his eyes, scrambling to hide in that place in between unconsciousness and awareness where he was numb enough not to feel.  True oblivion couldn’t come for him.  The Winter Soldier was too observant and proficient for that, allowing him a reprieve for a moment or two so he could regain strength enough to withstand another blow.  The serum was too strong to let him give up.

_“You don’t give up, do you, Rogers?”_

_“Nope.”_

_“I think that bastard busted your ribs.”_

_“Feels that way.”_

_“You gotta have more sense than this.  You can’t keep goin and gettin’ yourself involved in every scrape in the city.  You’re so stupid!”_

_“Couldn’t let them hurt her.  Couldn’t let them…”_

“Natasha,” he whispered.  The splinters of thoughts and memories jabbing into this mind were ragged, hateful things that wouldn’t form into anything coherent.  His eyes slipped shut.  He tasted blood in his mouth.  He felt sick.  This was worth it, though.  She was safe.  She was with Tony and Sam.  They’d protect her.  And he could still protect her, too.  _Don’t tell them she has it.  Don’t tell them where she went.  Don’t say anything._

_“Be strong, Steve.”_

_“Mama, please don’t leave me.”_   He tasted tears now, warm and salty, as he watched the light and life fade from his mother’s blue eyes.  He held her hand, frail and cold in his own, as she struggled for her final breaths.  He was praying, but it wouldn’t make any difference now.  God was going to take her from him, and he’d be–

 _“You’re not alone, sweet boy.  James is here to take care of you.”_   Lips that were dried to the point of cracking and breaking turned upward in a loving smile.  _“You know that, Steve.  James will take care of you.  I asked him to.”_

_“I know that, Mama.  I know.”_

“You promised,” Steve whispered, fighting to stay awake.  “You promised…”

“Where’s the drive?”  The Winter Soldier bore down on him, pushing down on his devastated lower body and crushing him to the floor.  He was a dark wraith looming over him, frozen with hatred.  Chained to his mission.  “Where is it?  Answer me!”

Steve could hardly breathe.  “You promised me you’d…”  He smelled clean air, warm air.  He breathed deeply of it, the scent of _home_ dragging him through delirium.  Bells ringing.  Summer.  “You promised…”

_“How was it?”_

_“S’okay.  She’s next to dad.”_

_“I was gonna ask…”_

“Where is it?  Who did you give it to?”

_“I know what you’re going to say, Buck.  It’s just…”_

The metal hand was harsh on his throat, driving into the flesh over his jugular and squeezing until there wasn’t blood going to his brain.  Steve choked, tears filling his eyes.  “You will tell me.”

_“We can put the couch cushions on the floor like when we were kids.  It’ll be fun.  All you gotta do is just shine my shoes, maybe take out the trash.  Come on.”_

_“Thank you, Buck, but I can get by on my own.”_

“Where is the drive?”  The hand slackened so as not to kill him.  A part of Steve wished it hadn’t.  “Where is the drive?”

“Can’t…  Won’t tell you.”

_“The thing is…  You don’t have to.  I’m with you til the end of the line, pal.”_

_The end of the line._

“You promised me!” Steve cried.  He struggled with a sudden surge of energy, pulling back and away even as the Winter Soldier pushed him lower and lower.  “Don’t you – don’t you remember?”

“Shut up,” Bucky snarled, but there was something in his eyes now.  Not recognition, but something Steve couldn’t place.  He didn’t have time to try.  The knife was there again, the tip poking into his cheek, skirting down over his lips and dangerously pressing between them.  “You don’t talk unless you’re answering my question.  Where is the drive?  Tell me, or I’ll gut you.”

It was the most the Winter Soldier had said.  It sounded like Bucky’s voice.  Steve couldn’t help the anger, the _rage_ , burning through him.  Rage that Bucky had suffered like this, tortured and turned into a tool of their enemies.  Rage that he’d lost his arm, that he’d lost his memories, that he’d lost _himself_.  Steve didn’t know how this had happened.  He had no explanation, but it didn’t matter.  Bucky was the closest thing he’d ever had to a brother, and he’d been twisted against him.  It the deepest and darkest corners of his heart, in the throes of his worst nightmares, _this_ had never even been a possibility.  The fury pulsing through his body brought strength with it, heat and defiance, and he swallowed down the moan in his throat and the blood in his mouth and made himself stay strong.  That _something_ was in the Winter Soldier’s eyes now.  A weak spot.  Vulnerability.  _Doubt._ “You know me,” Steve insisted again.

The Winter Soldier was angry, frustrated, and irritated, and he clearly had no qualms about venting that on his prisoner.  Another harsh slap knocked his head to the side, fracturing his cheek, but Steve still held on.  He could see his captor was struggling to maintain his patience, to stay true to his instructions.  Steve wasn’t sure if the cracks he saw growing in that icy glare were a good or bad thing, but he tried to have some faith.  He _had_ to have some faith now.  He was the only one who could.  “You know me.  Your name is James Buchanan Barnes.  I’m Steve Rogers.  You–”

“Shut up!”

Steve didn’t.  Those cracks were widening.  He wasn’t imagining it.  He went on, chancing retribution, the words slurring as they tumbled from his lips.  “We met when we were kids.  We lived down the street from each other.  We went to school together.  We went _everywhere_ together.  You used to take care of–”

 _“Shut up!”_   This time the Winter Soldier’s voice cracked with emotion, and the fist of the metal arm cracked across Steve’s face.

Steve almost lost consciousness.  Almost.  He clung to it, even with his heart straining in his chest to pump the paltry amount of blood still inside his body.  Even as his mind struggled to keep to the present, to his own mission.  _Protect Natasha.  Get Bucky back._ Memories raced uninhibited across his mind, and he let them loose, desperate to find Bucky in those cracks in the monster’s eyes.  “You had three younger sisters: Becca, Katie, and Ruth.  They pestered us to no end, but you loved them.  Your ma worked as a seamstress and she used to complain all the time when we ripped our clothes.  Your pa worked down at the pier, remember, and he brought you home things from faraway places.  We – we went to Ebbets Field every summer, even when we were so poor it took us all year to save the money for two tickets.  You dated Lizzie Sullivan and Mary Ann Turner and went steady with Kelly O’Donnell our last year in school and you kept trying to set me up with her sister.  You worked all summer in 1935 to pay for the medicine I needed because I got sick bad that spring.  You were born on March 10th, 1917.  You gotta remember, Buck!”

“No, I don’t,” the Winter Soldier seethed, but his voice wasn’t as sure and his eyes were wider.

“Yes, you do.”  Steve was struck for that.  He spat a mouthful of blood to the floor, but more and more kept coming as his body shook with wracking coughs and he struggled to hang on.  Everything shifted again.  Memories.  “You kept pullin’ me out of fights an’ patchin’ me up,” he said.  His voice was nothing more than a breath of air, halting and hurting.  “Even when we were in the war, you kept…”

_“You sure you don’t need a medic, Steve?  This looks bad.  You’re bleedin’ like a stuck pig or somethin’.”_

_“Just stick a bandage on it.  I’ll be fine.”_

_“Christ, you’re a stupid punk.”_

_“And you never listen to me, you jerk.  I’m fine.”_

“Please remember, Buck,” Steve begged.  He could hardly keep his eyes open now, and his lips and tongue weren’t working right.  Everything was coming out so garbled that he could barely understand what he was saying.  “You – you fell.  From the train.  I tried to get you, I swear I did, but you fell–”

That earned him another punch into his gut.  This one wasn’t purposeful.  It was retaliation.  It was driven by emotion, by insecurity, by fear and terror and anger.  Steve reeled from it, blood flooding his mouth again from below.  He could barely see out of his left eye, and his left ear was ringing and ringing.  “You need to remember me,” he whimpered.  “ _Please,_ Buck.”

“Stop calling me that,” hissed the voice in his ear.  _“Stop.”_

“You’re a brother to me.”

“You’re _nobody_ to me.”  Defeat crushed Steve down, and he closed his eyes.  That didn’t stop the tears.  “This is my mission.”  The metal arm was streaked and smeared with red.  “ _You_ are my mission.  My mission.  To break you.  To make you talk.”

“I won’t,” Steve groaned.  “You know I won’t.  So just – just kill me.”  At this point, as low and betrayed and hurt as he was, it was almost appealing.  _No.  Have to fight.  Have to.  For Nat._   “Won’t talk.”

The assassin looked down on him like he was surprised by the challenge.  Or that he didn’t understand.  Perhaps it was both, because when he hit Steve again, the blow wasn’t as brutal even if it still wrested a miserable wail from Steve’s lips.  Steve swung limply in his bonds, his knees scraping over the concrete floor.  He dropped his chin to his chest, too weary and beaten to fight as the Winter Soldier resumed his torture.  _Stay with it.  Don’t break.  Take it and keep breathing.  Keep fighting._

_I can’t.  Please stop…_

_“I’m with you til the end of the line.”_

“You promised,” Steve whispered.

The Winter Soldier was breathing heavily now, and he stepped back in a mixture of frustration and annoyance.  Those cracks were wider.  Widening.  “I don’t know you!” he yelled.  He sounded more desperate, like he was trying convince himself.  “I don’t!”

“You do,” Steve moaned.  “You know you do.”

“No, I don’t!”  It was becoming circular, impossible and unending, vicious and cruel to both of them.  The fissures in the Winter Soldier’s exterior were gaping now, but what was beneath was no less terrifying.  It was wild and fearful, raw like it hadn’t been free in ages and was aching to deny for security’s sake.  “I don’t!  I don’t!  _I don’t!_ ”  Steve wanted to argue, but Bucky – the Winter Soldier (he didn’t know which anymore) – was hitting him too hard and too fast.  He was barely conscious, brutalized beyond the point of struggling, as the maniacal assault went on tied to its frantic chant.

And all of the sudden, this wasn’t an interrogation about the whereabouts of Pierce’s data anymore.  The Winter Soldier was asking his own questions.  And all of the sudden, it wasn’t about denial anymore.  “How do I know you?”  Bucky was crouched in front of him now, lifting his head by his hair and forcing Steve to look at him.  There was no love in his eyes, no care.  He wanted answers.  “Who are you?  Who?”

“Steve,” Steve barely whispered.  “Told you.  Grew up…  Grew up together.  Went to war together.  You and me.”

“That’s not possible,” Bucky growled in rage.  “You’re a liar!”

“Friends,” Steve gasped.  “You and me.  Best friends.  Love you like… like my brother.”

“That’s not possible!”

Steve’s eyes slipped shut.  “You promised me…”

_“What?”_

“You promised me you’d stay with me til the – til the end of the line.”

The chains were released.  Suddenly Steve was falling.  He hit the floor hard, and he blacked out.

* * *

“Get up.  I need to get you out of here.”

He couldn’t.

“On your feet.  You need to walk.”

He couldn’t.

_“Get up!”_

That snapped Steve to some semblance of awareness.  He forced his eyes open.  He forced himself to focus.  The shadow looming over him looked angry and frustrated.  Bucky.  The Winter Soldier.  One and the same.  The metal hand reached down toward him, and Steve flinched.  But it only grabbed the cuffs around his wrists and hauled him upward.  “Stand,” he ordered.  “Pull.”

Steve didn’t understand for a second, shocked into a stupor both physically and mentally.  Bucky was trying to get his hands out of the cuffs.  Even with his enhanced strength and the bionic arm, he wasn’t strong enough.  However, when Steve put what was left of his strength into it, they managed to overcome the electromagnetic bond holding them together, and Steve was free.

Free, but beaten so badly that he could hardly think and hardly support his own weight, much less fight.  Bucky had his shield, and he shoved it toward him.  Steve stared at it dumbly, not quite comprehending what was happening.  This couldn’t be real.  He was confused, delirious still, trapped in a waking nightmare that was gushing into crazy hope.  “I can’t,” he moaned.  His shattered left knee failed him, and blood loss dropped him into shock.  Limply he went down again.

Bucky’s voice answered.  He wasn’t sure if it was real or not.  _“You gotta, Steve.  I’m going to get you home.  Get you somewhere safe.”_

“I can’t,” he pleaded again.

“Get up now,” the Winter Soldier snarled.  He reached down, grabbing Steve’s left wrist because his right was swollen nearly beyond use, and hauled him less than graciously back onto his feet.  Steve blinked tears from his eyes, struggling to ground himself.  The pain was brutal, every inch of his lacerated skin wracking with stinging misery, but he fought to get himself above it.  He didn’t know if he’d gotten through to Bucky or not; the dark stranger wearing the face of his friend in front of him was still cold, distant, and violent.  But whatever was happening, for whatever reason, the Winter Soldier was helping him.

It took some effort, but he managed to work his damaged right hand into the straps of his shield.  The Winter Soldier had drawn a gun, and he was pressed to the door into the cell.  Steve tried to limp after him, but his left leg completely refused to bear his weight.  His chest and abdomen were so injured that hobbling was the best he could muster.  He supposed he should have been afraid, but his thoughts were scattered and hazy.  The Winter Soldier watched him, and something flashed in Bucky’s eyes.  Fear.  Regret.  Hatred, both for his victim and himself.  He moved, stalking back toward Steve and taking his left arm.  He hesitated – this mindless, cold, vicious murderer _hesitated_ – before carefully draping Steve’s arm around his own neck and helping him stagger to the door.  Steve nearly collapsed in relief.  This felt…  This was Bucky.  Bucky walking him home after he’d been beaten up.  Bucky was going to take care of him.

Right?

The Winter Soldier slammed his palm to the scanner beside the door, and it opened.  He half walked, half dragged Steve out into the hallway.  Steve stumbled, unable to get his feet beneath him and keep them there.  The world was spinning, shadows and streaks of light and red.  Blood and sweat dripping into his eyes.  _“Hold on, Stevie.”_  Was he imagining that comforting voice in his ear?  Could he trust any of this?  _“Hold on.  I got you.  I got you.”_

There was a sharp crack, a gun going off, and a guard outside the interrogation cell fell to the floor, dead.  The Winter Soldier quickly aimed again, methodically and precisely, and two more guards were murdered before they even had a chance to react.  He lowered his gun to his side, tightening his grip on Steve’s slouching body, and together they shuffled down the corridor.  The Winter Soldier seemed to be annoyed with his burden, with Steve’s complete dependence on him for support and strength.  “Lift your shield,” he growled.  “Protect yourself.”

Steve tried to, but his arm was dislocated and his bones were damaged so the commands from his brain (which were sluggish and poorly coordinated to begin with) never seemed to reach his muscles.  “Just… leave me…  Run away from them, Buck.”  He closed his eyes as Bucky left him at a corner to look ahead.  He leaned against the wall, surrendering.  He wasn’t getting away from this.  He wanted to tell Bucky to find Natasha, to keep her and the others safe, to stop SHIELD, but he couldn’t manage the words.  It wasn’t smart.  This wasn’t Bucky ( _but it is_ ) and he couldn’t trust him ( _but I do_ ).  He couldn’t think, and he couldn’t speak.  There was blood in his throat, welling up from internal injuries, and he could barely breathe around it.  “Go.”

But the Winter Soldier was back, harshly driving him back around the corner, pinning him against the wall in the shadows, and clasping the metal hand over his mouth to muffle his cry of agony.  Fear rushed over Steve, and he struggled feebly, trying to get his shield up between him and his enemy.  It took his beleaguered, battered brain a minute to realize that Bucky was protecting him rather than trying to kill him.  Another company of SHIELD soldiers was passing.  Bucky held him very still, waiting and waiting a few endless seconds for the patrol to walk by them.  When they did, he moved like lightning, releasing Steve and whirling.  A knife had come free of his combat suit, the same one he’d used on Steve earlier, and he wielded it like a machine once more, cutting throats.  Steve could hardly follow the melee because it was so fast and brutal.  In a blink, the group of soldiers was dead.

Bucky turned, eyeing him emptily.  Steve didn’t know what to make of it, the harshness and violence.  It had been one thing when it had been poured onto him.  Now it was turned onto others in defense of him.  He wasn’t sure which was more disturbing.  He wasn’t sure now was the time to be wondering about it, but he was.  It took a great deal of effort to anchor himself in this reality, more energy than he had at present, and with a blink he was lost in the dozens of sharp memories pricking their way across the planes of his mind.  Bucky in an alley back in Brooklyn, dragging his sorry ass up off the ground and leading him home.  Bucky laughing and smiling to make him feel better when he couldn’t stop coughing and everything hurt from whatever ailment with which he’d been struck that week.  Bucky during the war, hellfire raining all around them, leading the Commandos through it with strength and determination that Steve envied.  This wasn’t that Bucky.  But it was still Bucky, and Bucky was trying to save him.

So he shoved himself up and off the wall, ignoring the blood on the floor from him and the men Bucky had murdered.  Bucky grabbed his arm again and returned it to his shoulders.  He wrapped his metal arm around Steve’s waist, the gun clenched at his side and Steve’s shield in front of their chests as they limped as quickly as they could down the corridors of the detention level.  In the back of his mind, Steve knew this was foolish.  There wasn’t going to be an easy escape, probably not an escape at all.  This was SHIELD, and it was more than obvious Pierce had the vast majority of it under his command.  But somehow that didn’t matter.  Somehow _none_ of it mattered.  Not how Bucky had survived that fall.  Not whatever had been done to him and whoever had done it.  Not that SHIELD wasn’t what Steve had thought and if Project: Insight launched, the safety of the entire world was at stake.  For a moment, as twisted and inexplicable and unexpected as it was, they were together again, like friends.  Brothers facing the world with each other as they always had.

They reached the elevator.  The Winter Soldier’s jaw was set, his eyes a steely grey as he left Steve against another wall and stalked his prey.  Steve struggled to stay conscious, watching as Bucky approached the unsuspecting SHIELD agents.  Again, the fight was over in a matter of seconds.  He could barely trace Bucky’s moves, kicks meant to crush chests, punches that sent men flying to hit the walls and the desk of the security checkpoint, the knife wicked in the bright, fluorescent knife as it sliced and stabbed and came up red.  The Winter Soldier was unmerciful and exacting, and he killed them all before a single one managed to raise any alarm.

Steve swallowed the misery in his throat.  He limped to Bucky’s side, dragging his left leg as best he could, but the pain in his abdomen was too severe and he crumpled with a soft cry.  Bucky moved fast, catching him on his way down and hauling him back up and across the blood-slicked tiles of the floor.  Dazedly Steve realized they weren’t going to chance the elevator.  Bucky was pulling and yanking him to the doors beyond it that led to the stairwell.

“I can’t,” Steve whispered, eyeing the flights of gray, cement steps that led endlessly upward in nauseous terror.  Bucky didn’t answer.  His flesh and blood hand was tight like steel around Steve’s wrist, pulling him up and along.  Steve stumbled on the first step, nearly pitching forward and planting his face on the stairs, but Bucky was there again, steadying him dispassionately and dragging him back to his feet.  They climbed with surprising speed, mostly because Bucky was bearing most of his weight.  Suddenly he couldn’t keep quiet.  He had to know.  The questions spilled from his lips, even though he could hardly spare the air in his lungs to speak.  “What did they do to you?”  No answer.  “What – what happened to you, Buck?”  No answer.  The Winter Soldier said not a thing, like he hadn’t heard.  Or he was ignoring Steve completely.  _A mission of a different kind._   “Buck, talk to me…  What did they do to you?  Please–”

Steve’s voice failed him.  His lungs clenched, and the world tipped.  They stopped at the top of a riser, and he doubled over, unable to make his broken chest function the way it needed to.  He gasped, coughing raggedly, thick rivulets of blood dripping from his trembling lips to the floor.  His tortured form bent and he nearly collapsed.  Vaguely he wondered if this wasn’t irrelevant, if his wounds were so serious that blood loss and shock would overcome the resilience and enhanced healing of the serum.  He sagged to the steps, and the Winter Soldier let him, looking up the stairwell and then back down it warily.  “Why?” Steve moaned pathetically, his voice a mere rasp.  He wasn’t sure what he was asking.  Why had Bucky survived and come back.  Why had he betrayed him.  Why was he the Winter Soldier.  Why the Winter Soldier had beaten him to within an inch of his life.  Why was he doing this to him.  For him.

Why was he helping Steve now.

The agony in his heart was palpable, somehow stronger than the pain from the dozens of slash and stab wounds and contusions and broken bones and somehow more threatening to his life.  The Winter Soldier looked down on him, still without recognition, without emotion.  That fire from before was gone like it had never been there.  “Save your breath,” he ordered coolly. 

That sounded like Bucky, _so much_ like Bucky ordering him around because he was too damn stupid to take care of himself.  Steve clung to that thought, losing himself in the anguish pumping through his veins and bleeding from his body, as the Winter Soldier allowed this brief moment of rest.  Then he grabbed Steve and pulled him up again forcefully.  Steve bit off a cry, tumbling into Bucky’s arms, shivering so badly he thought he was going to be sick.  “Walk,” Bucky ordered, and then they were climbing again.

They didn’t have to go much farther, and that was just as well because this exercise in futility had worn Steve down to nothing.  He couldn’t feel aside from pain.  He couldn’t think, couldn’t perceive anything clearly or sharply beyond the veil of numbness blocking his senses from the world.  All he knew was he needed to keep walking, keep climbing, keep breathing.  Keep trusting Bucky.  Keep believing this was real.  _Keep fighting.  Keep–_

The fire escape doors were pushed open with a thud, and Bucky pulled him through them.  Then they stopped.  Steve blinked languidly, trying to understand why.  The dark blobs he saw wouldn’t settle into distinct forms for what felt like an eternity, but finally they did.  The dark blobs were soldiers with their rifles pointed at them.  More than a dozen of them.  The Winter Soldier could defeat that many.  The Winter Soldier could dispense with them, murder them, break free and fight his way out.  The Winter Soldier was a weapon, a _machine_ , and no one could stop him.

But Bucky wasn’t moving.  He was still beside Steve, stiff and rigid.  He was staring – _frightened_ – at once of the shadows.  A gray shadow with sandy brown hair.  A weathered old man that was more of a monster than a man.  Pierce.  “What are you doing?” he asked evenly.  The question wasn’t directed at Steve.  He wasn’t even looking at Steve.  He was staring – _furiously_ – at Bucky.  When his question went unanswered, he asked it again, slower and more forcefully.  “What are you doing?”

Bucky said nothing.  He was completely motionless, seemingly unreadable.  But Steve knew him too well not to see the fear.  It was swimming in his eyes.  “Your mission was to interrogate the prisoner,” Pierce reminded, and now his narrowed gaze flicked to Steve.  “This seems rather counterproductive to that, don’t you think?”  Bucky looked down.  It was the most vulnerable thing he’d done.  “Don’t you think?”

“Yes, sir,” Bucky said.

“Then why are you here?” It was alarming how evil and powerful Pierce could sound while asking something so mundane and nonthreatening.  “Did the prisoner break?  Did you extract the information?”

“No, sir,” Bucky said.

Pierce worried his lip in admonishment, settling his hands to his hips.  “I’ll ask you again,” he said after a silent, tense moment.  “Why have you failed your assignment?”

Bucky lifted his chin slightly.  There were tears in his eyes, glimmering faintly but tears nonetheless.  “Because I know him.”

Steve nearly choked in relief.  Bucky wasn’t gone.  He wasn’t dead.  He was under all of it, _in there_ somewhere.  Bucky shifted ever so slightly, even as terrified as he was, to stand between Pierce, the soldiers, and Steve.  For his own part, Pierce’s face was stoic.  If he was displeased at all with the situation, it wasn’t obvious.  He simply stared at Bucky and Steve, at his asset protecting his enemy.  Then he shook his head.  “Take them.”

The soldiers opened fire.  Bucky moved fast, catching the first round of bullets on his arm.  The bullets clanked uselessly against the metal.  More slammed into Steve’s shield, and normally it wouldn’t have fazed him, but his stance was so poor and weak that the impact knocked him down.  Bucky twisted, his eyes wide, frantic.  Steve struggled weakly, _seeing_ Bucky and Bucky _seeing_ him, but he couldn’t do anything.  His body was too broken.

Pierce said something low, something in Russian, that Steve couldn’t really hear.  But Bucky heard it.  And Bucky dropped to his knees, dropped like a rock, like all the fight had been sucked from his muscles in a breath.  He hit the floor, his hands obediently raised, his fingers threaded together on the back of his head.  It was a trigger of some sort.  A subliminal command.  That was all it took to reduce the world’s deadliest weapon to a pliant, useless prisoner.

Steve choked on his breath, realizing he was alone in this now.  He tried to roll to his side and scramble away.  Terror jolted through him, powering his bruised and beaten limbs, but it was no use.  He was too hurt, and without Bucky, he had no hope.  Maybe he’d never had any.

It didn’t matter.  Pierce watched as his men reclaimed their wayward prisoner.  Steve hardly struggled as they yanked his shield away, wrenching his hurt arm anew.  They pulled him upward onto his knees beside Bucky.  Pierce shook his head, as if he couldn’t quite believe Steve still had it within him to resist.  “You surprise me, Captain.  Disarming my weapons like this…  I don’t know whether to be impressed by you or hate you all the more.”  Steve gritted his teeth, his vision swimming and his heart pounding in helpless fury.  “So he thinks he knows you.”  Pierce smiled, though he wasn’t at all pleased.  “Well, let’s see what we can do about that.”

* * *

Steve was being dragged somewhere again.  This time he was more aware, more capable of struggling, which he did in earnest.  Seeing some sign of Bucky emerge from the Winter Soldier had revitalized him, given him hope even though they were in a worse situation now than they had been a few minutes ago.  The soldiers pulling him grew frustrated with his attempts to fight, earning him numerous more strikes with a stun baton or two in order to subdue him.  Still, he wouldn’t give up.

Bucky, conversely, wasn’t fighting at all.  He was walking behind Pierce, his eyes lowered, his stature submissive.  He was lost, wincing like he was remembering something.  Something awful.  A few times Steve had shouted out to him, calling for him to fight, begging him to do something.  But he didn’t.  The control Pierce had over him was deep and impregnable.  He was their puppet, their tool.  Their weapon.  _An asset_.  The thought made Steve’s heart thunder more and more.  After a few minutes of Steve yelling, Pierce lost his patience and turned back to his men.  “Shut him up.”

Steve scrambled away, but it wasn’t much use.  There were a dozen guards on him.  All it took was a stun baton shoved into his chest to knock him to the floor.  While he lay there, dazed and convulsing with the aftershocks, they rebound his hands behind his back and stuffed a gag between his teeth and tightly secured it.  He groaned, two burly men on either side of him grabbing him and lifting him by his elbows and carrying him down and deeper into the Triskelion.

They were somewhere below the detention level.  Here it was dark, quiet, and a bit dank.  It was obviously a secret place, too far from the normal traffic of SHIELD’s operations to be discovered.  The hallways and rooms were teeming with men, scientists, and techs who all seemed firmly under Pierce’s command.  They walked through an iron cage and a heavily fortified security post.  There was a large room beyond, filled with equipment.  Some of it looked older and outdated.  There was a tall capsule in one corner, copper-colored and big enough to hold a man.  There was a solitary window in its front.  It reminded Steve of the machine Howard Stark had built for Project: Rebirth.  More disturbing than that, though, was a chair, flanked by monitors and equipment.  It sat slightly reclined and had restraints on the arms and legs.  Wicked looking implements were attached to it, particularly around the headrest.  A group of doctors wearing white lab coats and other men dressed in suits were waiting.  The guards dropped Steve near the door, yanking him up to his knees by his hair.  Steve regarded the scene with wide, horrified eyes.  What the hell was this place?

_Oh, God…  He was here.  He was here the whole time and I never knew it!_

Pierce said something again, low and in Russian, right into Bucky’s ear.  Steve didn’t catch it, but whatever it was, it made Bucky walk over to the chair and sit in it.  Despite how useless it was, Steve squirmed and screamed at him to stop.  “Shut the fuck up!” snapped one of the guards beside him, smacking him viciously upside the head.  The force of the blow was enough to jostle his tenuous hold on consciousness, and his vision darkened and he drifted a moment.

When he came back to himself, Pierce was standing in front of Bucky.  His arms were folded across his chest, like a cross parent addressing a child who’d misbehaved.  The image was sickening.  “What was your mission?” the man asked slowly, as if he was teaching.  Teaching a lesson.  Bucky’s eyes were empty.  Dead again.  He didn’t answer.  Pierce lost his patience and decked him roughly across the face.  Steve jerked in anger, clenching his hands into fists behind him.  “Answer me.  What was your mission?”

“To interrogate the prisoner.”

“Why did you fail that mission?”

Bucky blinked, and his lifeless gaze slipped around Pierce to Steve.  _Please, Bucky…_   “Because I couldn’t hurt him.  I know him.”  He looked back to Pierce, almost like that sad, hurt child looking for acceptance from that angry parent.  “Who is he?”

Pierce shook his head.  “You met him earlier this week on another assignment,” he said.  “You were sent to capture or kill him and retrieve an item he carried.  That is the information we needed you to obtain from him.  We needed to know what he did with the item.”

Steve shook his head, even as the fingers in his hair twisted tighter.  He wanted to scream and shout – _do something!_ – to tell Bucky not to listen, but he couldn’t, not with the array of guns pointed at him.  Bucky said nothing, looking lost and confused as his wet eyes dropped to the floor.  He seemed young, so tortured that Steve felt his own eyes fill with burning tears.  _I let him fall, and they took him.  They did this to him.  They did this to him right here.  Oh, God, what happened to him?_   Bucky looked around the room like he was seeing it for the first time, though it was sadly obvious that he’d been there before.  Many times.  This equipment…  They’d used it to create the Winter Soldier.  Eventually his wide, _innocent_ gaze fell to Steve.  Steve was shaking in pain and desperation.  He tried to call out Bucky’s name, but it was only a muffled whine.  “I know him,” Bucky softly said again.

Pierce sighed and bent down, bracing his hands on his knees.  “Your work has been a gift to mankind.  It’s shaped a century.  And I need you to do it again, to follow my orders and see your mission fulfilled.”  Bucky’s eyes narrowed, and his face settled into a hardened scowl like he knew he was being manipulated.  Steve prayed he did.  “That man?”  Pierce pointed at Steve.  “He stole something very important to us.  _Very_ important.  Without it, all of our plans for a better future will fail, and all of the hard work you have done will be worth nothing.  Society is at the tipping point between order and chaos, and we’re going to give it a push.”  Pierce’s gaze never wavered from Bucky’s, holding it like that was holding him.  “But we can’t without what he took from us, so I need you to take it back.  Do you understand me?”

Cold panic coiled in the pit of Steve’s stomach, and he winced, praying that that didn’t mean what he feared it did.  However, Pierce’s smug glance was all the confirmation necessary.  His gloating words were almost too painful to hear.  “Agent Romanoff was stupid enough to boot up the drive from the _Lemurian Star_.  That was all it took, Captain.  One moment of stupidity.  All of this pain and suffering of yours…  Wasted.  We know exactly where she is.  We know she’s with Stark.  And you can’t keep her from us any longer.”  Steve closed his eyes in defeat.  Still, he couldn’t help but think that maybe it wasn’t too late.  Pierce was changing the Winter Soldier’s mission.  He was sending his asset after Natasha and Sam, which meant SHIELD didn’t have the drive yet.  And if Natasha had made it to Tony, SHIELD would have to contend with Iron Man.  That was something.  There was still hope.

But there might not be for long.  Pierce turned to Bucky again.  “I need you to do your part, so I can do mine,” he said.  “And we can give the world the freedom it deserves.”  Bucky looked back at Steve, like he didn’t understand what his part was, like his eyes and mind were open for the first time in decades.  Steve shook his head as much as he could with the hands holding him tight.  “Do you understand me?” Pierce asked again.  “You will go and hunt down Black Widow and bring me back that drive.  Do you understand your mission?”

Bucky seemed like he was breaking from inside, like those cracks were so wide now that there was no stopping the hold these monsters had over him from shattering.  His lower lip quivered, and his face crumpled in a last attempt to hold in a sob.  “But I know him.”

Steve closed his eyes, tears slipping from their corners to streak down the blood on his face.  He dropped his chin and sagged as far as the men restraining him would allow.  Bucky knew him.  _Bucky knew him._

“Prep him.”  Pierce’s order cut through Steve’s consuming relief.

One of the doctors looked aghast.  “But he’s been out of cryo-freeze too long.”

“Then wipe him and start over.”

 _No._   The soldiers crowded the chair on which Bucky was sitting, their guns lifted and ready to fire like they were cornering a wild animal.  But Bucky wasn’t struggling.  His face was still tormented, on the cusp of tears, as the doctors pushed him back into the chair and secured his arms and legs in the restraints.  _No, Bucky!  Don’t let them!_   Steve was yelling again, fighting anew, but it didn’t matter.  His shouts were too garbled to make any sense, and his body was viciously shoved to the floor and held there.  He squirmed in frustration and panic.  He couldn’t see Bucky now.  He couldn’t stop this.  He couldn’t do anything!  _No!_

Pierce’s goddamn shoes were right in front of his face again.  “I guess I was wrong, Captain,” he said evenly.  “There was still a man underneath the machine.”  Equipment was clicked into place.  Steve shuddered with the sound of it, squeezing his eyes shut and forcing more strength into his battered body.  It wasn’t enough.  Bucky had hurt him too badly for him to help him now.  “Will this work on him?”

The question turned Steve’s blood to ice water.  It was directed at one of the scientists.  He couldn’t see the other man, but he could hear scuffling and something whirring to life and the man’s hesitant, even fearful, response.  “I – I don’t know, sir.  The original notes said the serum that was used was flawed compared to the one they had for the super soldier project, so there’s no way to tell, but even if there was a chance, it would take more than what we–”

“I don’t care.  Do Rogers next,” Pierce said, “just in case it could work.  At the very least it’s punishment for wasting so much of our time.  And for costing me Zola.”  Steve stiffened, trying to swallow down the wail of horror and misery constricting his throat.  Pierce stepped into his line of sight, looking down on him in cool confidence.  “And at best we can break you yet, Captain.  It would be worth it, wouldn’t it, to have two of our oldest enemies turned to our cause?”  Pierce smiled smugly.  “Hail HYDRA.”

Now Bucky started to scream.  Steve screwed his eyes shut and silently cried for them both while he waited his turn.

* * *

_Natasha._

No way he was going to let them take her.  _Never._   Not any of them.

_Peggy.  Tony and Bruce and Thor.  Sam.  Nick Fury.  Hill.  Phillips and Howard.  Dugan and Falsworth and Dernier and Jones and Morita.  His mother.  His father._

_Bucky._

_Natasha._

_Himself._

He wasn’t going to let them take one bit of him.

He fought.  He held on.

_Natasha!_

The electricity jolted into his skull with ragged, brutal fingers, clawing at his thoughts, tearing and yanking and _ripping_.  He held tight to everything.  He held on, and it wasn’t strong enough to overcome him.  It wasn’t strong enough.  _You’re not taking me!_

They didn’t.  And when it was over, when he was losing consciousness, he saw the Winter Soldier looming over him.  His eyes were dead and empty again, the color of slate and steel, and any hint of familiarity was gone.  Destroyed.  The cracks for which Steve had worked so hard were sealed like they’d never been there at all.  Bucky was _gone_.  Steve tried to moan something.  Bucky’s name.  A plea.  But it was so garbled and wrecked that even he didn’t recognize it.  The Winter Soldier hauled him out of the chair and dragged him back to his cell.

Now he was chained to the wall, shivering and suffering, sick to his stomach and struggling to make his lungs breathe and his heart beat and his mind _think_.  The procedure hadn’t worked on him, but there’d been casualties in the war.  There always were.  So many casualties.  Their machine hadn’t destroyed his memories, but it sure as hell had jumbled them up his head.  He couldn’t figure out exactly what had happened to him, like it was all some sort of foggy, blurry image that randomly and sporadically came into focus.  He couldn’t remember precisely why he was here.  Where _here_ was.  _SHIELD._   Why everything hurt so badly.  _They torturing you._ What he needed to do.  _Stay strong and keep fighting.  Don’t break._   For whom he was fighting.

_Natasha._

_Bucky._

Something was wrong with Bucky.  Someone had hurt him.  Bucky had hurt Steve.  Someone had changed Bucky.  Bucky was gone.  _Bucky is the Winter Soldier._ It went around and around, the facts returning slowly and haphazardly and out of order.  HYDRA had taken Bucky.  HYDRA.

They wouldn’t take Natasha, too.  They wouldn’t.

Steve whimpered, riding out the waves of excruciating agony coursing over his hapless body and battering his even more helpless mind.  This was the worst pain he’d ever experienced.  Worse than when he’d been shot in the heart.  Worse than breaking his back.  Worse than freezing alive and worse than being turned into Captain America.  His brain was throbbing against the confines of his skull.  His skin was crawling.  His muscles were cramping and contorting and relaxing without his consent or control.  His eyes wouldn’t focus.  He was bleeding all over.  So much blood.  Was there any left in him?  Vaguely he knew he should be worried, terrified for his life for the amount of red he saw beneath him on the floor, but he couldn’t manage anything with the numb haze in his head.  And vaguely he knew he needed to fight, to try to escape now that they’d left him alone, but he couldn’t manage that, either.  Bucky…  How many times had they done this to him?  Steve had had only a taste of the damage, of the violation.  Only a fraction of the abuse and torture Bucky had endured in HYDRA’s hands.

HYDRA.

HYDRA was back.

He’d died for nothing.  They’d both died for _nothing_.

 _Don’t think that._   At least he knew who he was fighting now.  And it hadn’t been for nothing.  It wasn’t for nothing.

But he was scared.  And he wanted…  “Nat,” Steve whispered.  His mouth was so dry, and his tongue kept pushing up against something in it.  Something tight between his teeth.  Something like cloth, but thicker.  He squeezed his eyes shut as another bout of nausea and agony wracked him.  Why wasn’t his voice right?  It didn’t matter, he supposed.  He couldn’t think of what he wanted to say.  He couldn’t think of he wanted to do.  He only knew he wanted her.  He needed her.  “Nat, please…”

“I have orders from Pierce.”

“Nobody told me a damned thing about it.”

“He wants the prisoner’s mental state evaluated to see if the procedure was successful.”

“Doc’s already been in.  Said it didn’t take.  Said we needed to do it again.  Said we should just leave him in there until he breaks or he dies.”  Steve stiffened and closed his eyes.

“That’s not what I heard.  And that was thirty minutes ago.  He wants Rogers checked now.”  The voice was soft, vaguely familiar.

“Pierce wants him as another of his toys              .”

“Pierce wants him _alive_ in case they need to use him against Romanoff.”

“That’s not what _I_ heard.”  The response was snide and condescending.

There was an annoyed sigh.  “Do you want to bother him with this?  Pierce isn’t exactly in the best of moods with all of the delays.”

A pause.  Then a gruff, “Make it quick.”

Another voice joined the conversation.  “Barton’s looking for you, Ramirez.”

“What about Rogers?”

“It’s no problem.  He can’t fight anymore.”

They were right.  Steve drifted again.  He drifted on his muddled thoughts, on his memories recovering from the injuries done to them.  Memories resurfacing.  Natasha pressed to his side.  He could feel her weight against him like it was a real thing, not a phantom warmth but true and wonderful.  Her arm across his chest.  The sweet smell of her hair as she tucked her head under his chin.  The gentle press of her lips against his throat.  “I’m here, Captain.”  These things were real, weren’t they?  Not a hallucination.  _Real.  “Where does it hurt?”_

_“It’s fine.  I’m okay.  It’s not so bad.”_

_“Ugh.  You’re a lousy liar.”_

_“So you keep telling me.”_

_“We need to work on it.  You can’t be a SHIELD agent and be so awful at lying.”_

_“You want to teach Captain America how to lie?”_

_“I told you when we started.  I want to teach Captain America a lot of things.”_ She shifted, smiling that coy smile of hers, turning to look into his eyes.

_“That sounds pretty self-serving.”_

_“What can I say?  I’m selfish.  And you’re mine.”_

_“Always.  I love you.”_

_“I know.  Let me take care of you.”_

“Captain?”  Steve blinked.  There was no one beside him.  No one touching him.  A figure was kneeling in front of him.  He couldn’t focus on the face.  It was Nat, wasn’t it?  It had to be.  “Captain?”

The gag was gone from his mouth.  Soft skin.  Blond hair?  He thought he knew her.  Was it Natasha?  He blinked slowly, trying to make sense of what he was seeing.  Shock from blood loss and what had been done to him refused to release him, playing havoc with his senses.  She had to be Natasha.  Nat had just been _there_ , with him, holding him…  There was no moisture in his mouth, so he could barely speak.  “Nat?”

“It’s Agent Carter, Captain.”  He couldn’t piece the features together – eyes and nose and mouth – to make a face that he could connect with a name.  The mouth frowned, and the eyes were teeming with horror.  “Oh, my God.  What did they do to you?”

Steve closed his own eyes.  It was too hard to keep them open, not when the world was spinning so viciously and nothing was right.  Everything felt like it was light years away, stretched to infinity and distorted.  Fingers pressed around his neck, tender and careful.  “Nat…  Please…  I’m sorry.  So sorry.  Couldn’t stop them.  I tried so hard, but they found out, and I–”

“It’s Sharon,” the voice said quietly and firmly.  “Sharon Carter.  It’s not your fault.  Can you look at me?  Try.  Open your eyes.  Come on.”  He didn’t.  He couldn’t.  “Damn it.  Here.  Drink.  Hurry.  There isn’t much time before they come back.”  Something plastic was pushed between his sore lips, and water squirted into his mouth.  He sucked at it weakly.  It tasted like blood, but he swallowed because he was so thirsty.  “Easy.” 

He coughed weakly when he was done, his eyelids fluttering.  “Shouldn’ta come…”

“Don’t try to talk.  Just rest.”

“…Hurt you.”

“Don’t.  Rest.  We’re with you,” the voice said again.  “You’re not alone.”  The comforting hands were back, carefully wiping his face with something a little damp and coarse.  Steve groaned, grimacing as the agony returned without warning.  It was harsh and unrelenting.  Nerves tortured to the brink burned and writhed, and he leaned into the touch just for the fact that it was something pleasant, something to ground him.  “This’ll help with the pain a little.  It’s not much, but it’s all I can do.”  He barely felt the stinging prick in his thigh.  Once.  Twice.

Steve shuddered.  Something that felt warm and wet rushed over him, distancing his mind from his body.  He sank into it, trying to breathe.  The hands slipped from his face.  “No…  Don’t leave me…  Don’t let them–”

“We’re going to get you out of here,” came the voice in his ear, breathy with panic but strong with faith.  With a promise.  “I have to go now.  I have to.  But we’re not leaving you.  You understand me?”

“No, please…  Please don’t leave me.”

“Just hang on.  Keep fighting.  We’re going to get you out of here.”  The gag was quickly but carefully stuffed back into his mouth and tightened around his face.  Steve heaved a sob, shaking his head and stiffening in desperation and betrayal.  He pulled on the cuffs around his wrists that held him to the wall, but nothing gave.  Nothing gave, and she was leaving him.  “Keep fighting.  I swear we will get you out, Steve.  I promise.”

_Natasha!  Please don’t go!  Don’t leave me!_

But she was gone.  The warmth was gone.  The tender touches, the relief, the comfort.  Hope.  Faith.  All of it, gone.  And so was he, alone and falling down so deep that nothing could reach him now.  Not the memories or the nightmares.  Not the pain.  Not the Winter Soldier.  Not even Natasha.  He wasn’t sure if he let her go or if they took her away, but it didn’t matter.  He was lost without her.


	12. Chapter 12

It wasn’t until she was safely in the shower in a guest suite at Stark Tower that Natasha finally broke down.  When she did, when the first sob punched through her mask of calm control, she wilted under the scalding spray and completely let go.  It was like an avalanche, a slip of snow at the top of a tall, tall mountain that fell and rolled and built and rapidly grew into a cascade that crushed and suffocated everything in its past.  She couldn’t stop it, even though she hated herself for these weak, pathetic minutes.  She hated herself for standing there, crying, washing the blood and soot away when Steve was in the hands of their enemies being tortured.  She hated Clint for betraying her, for doing this to her.  How could he?  _How?_   She hated Steve for his goddamn _stupid_ fucking heroics that had landed him in this situation, that had driven him to destroy himself again for her sake.  She hated Steve for not being there for her, too, for not being at her side like he’d promised.  Didn’t he know how much she needed him?  Then she hated herself more for being angry with him when everything he’d ever done since becoming her partner and her friend and her lover had been to protect her.

And there was so much more.  She hated SHIELD for lying to her, for dulling her perception of things so completely and filling her head with so much self-righteous bullshit that she hadn’t even _seen_ the evil growing all around her.  She hated Fury and Hill and Rumlow and Pierce.  She hated and hated and hated, even though she knew it was pointless and futile.  She wanted to scream and hurt something as badly as she was hurting.  She wanted to go and get Steve out of there, _right now_ , even though they weren’t ready and they needed to know what was on that drive and they needed a better plan of attack because, even with Iron Man on their side, storming the Triskelion was suicide.  She wanted to kill.  That was how she’d been trained to deal with emotions like this, with chaos and vulnerability.  Take life.  Excel at it.  Enjoy the power.  She wanted _something_ to fill the painful, yearning void in her chest where her heart had been ripped open and was bleeding and bleeding.

Mostly, though, she just wanted to stop crying.

No.  More than any of that, she wanted Steve.  She wanted him whole and safe, away from these monsters from his past and their present that would do him harm.  This was fear unlike anything else she’d ever known.  This was pain unlike anything she’d ever experienced.  They had to get him out of there.  They had to.

Eventually she did stop crying.  Eventually she wore herself out and the hot rush of tears abated and the sobs wracking her weary form faded until she was drawing deeper, shaking gulps of air.  The water was still as hot and harsh as it had been when she’d come into the spacious shower, like millions of stinging needles pounding against her skin.  She leaned against the expensive tile, sagging into the spray, closing her eyes and breathing through the pain.  She’d only cried like this once before: the night she’d tried to walk away from Steve only to end up at his apartment.  That moment had been wrought with grief and fear and so much regret.  But that moment had led to something wonderful, an affirmation of goodness and love.  This…  This was hungry, teeming with unsatisfied rage that slithered and coiled in her chest like some sort of parasite trying to engrain itself into her, and this wasn’t going to lead to anything but more pain.

_Go.  Move.  You have to save him.  You have to!_

She turned the shower off and limped out of it, wrapping herself in a towel.  The bathroom was huge, probably as big as Steve’s bedroom back home.  She stood at the vanity, trying to keep the weight from her hurt leg, tugging a brush through her tangled hair.  The mirror was fogged.  She didn’t wipe it away, didn’t want to see what she knew was lurking behind the condensation.  Her reflection.  Haggard.  Lost.  _Hurt._   That made her eyes burn, and she teetered on the edge of another break down, hating herself again and hating this goddamn weakness.  She’d been low before, battered and abused, but she hadn’t felt so helpless.  She knew what was different now, of course.  Steve’s lack of presence at her side was almost a presence in and of itself, sharp and demanding of her attention and syphoning of her strength.  God, how many mornings had had she come out of the shower in his apartment to find him standing at the vanity, shaving or brushing his teeth or just waiting for her with a sly smile on his face?  All the times they’d talked together, worked together, fought together, made love together…  It was this _weight_ on her now, and she could hardly move at all for the pressure driving her down.

She did, though.  _Go.  You need to get to him._ It took some effort, some long, deep breaths and a few moments of clearing her mind, but she managed to find her calm.  She finished getting ready and limped out into the spacious bedroom of the suite Tony had given her to freshen up.  She found a set of clothing on her bed.  “Agent Romanoff.”  The soft, British voice made her lurch in surprise, and she swore softly as she whirled, eyeing the gun she’d left too far away on the counter of the bathroom.  “I am sorry to startle you.”

It was JARVIS.  She belatedly recalled that Stark had the AI installed in every room of the Tower.  JARVIS was omnipresent in Tony’s life, it seemed, and she should have known that from her time undercover as Pepper Potts’ assistant.  “It’s alright,” she managed in response.

“Mr. Stark asked me to inform you that he had clothes sent up and regrets that he had to guess your size.  There is also a medical kit on the table in the main room.  He believed you would rather tend to your injuries yourself, but he is willing to summon a doctor if you wish.”

“No,” she said curtly, “I can do it.”

“As you wish.”

The aforementioned clothes were in a neat pile on the bed.  She half expected (knowing Stark) something skimpy or revealing, but it was a pair of black capris, a comfortable blue shirt that hugged her form, and a pair of running shoes.  She dressed but left the pants off.  Then she limped out to the main area, where the medical kit was indeed waiting on one of the expensive-looking coffee tables.  She grabbed it, leaning wearily against the couch.  She hadn’t looked much at the gunshot wound, blocking it from her mind, but now it was pulsing in pain.  It took some effort, but she got situated on the couch with her leg propped a bit.  She had already peeled the bandage off.  The wound was neatly stitched; thankfully none of them had torn during the melee at Camp Lehigh.  It looked fairly good, incredibly sore and tender to the touch, but not infected.  She was damn lucky.

JARVIS’ voice cut through the silence again.  “Mr. Wilson is at the door.  Shall I let him enter?”

Natasha hesitated a moment, but she couldn’t very well send him away even though the thought of company when she was so raw and hurting was pretty unappealing.  “Yeah.”

A moment later, Sam strolled into the living area.  He was freshly showered as well, the multitude of cuts on his face treated.  He as well was limping, though it seemed mostly due to a sore chest.  He didn’t seem at all bothered by her state of relative undress.  “Hey,” he greeted softly.  Despondently.

Natasha looked up from carefully applying antiseptic salve to the entrance wound.  “Hi.”

An uncomfortable moment of silence followed, Sam watching with his hands stuffed in the pockets of his jeans.  They still hardly knew each other, so the disquiet of an uncertain friendship forged in traumatic conditions was heavy upon them.  Natasha angled herself to try and get more of the antibiotic cream on the exit wound on the back of her lower thigh.  It wasn’t as easy as it could be.  “Here.  Can I help?”  Natasha looked up at him.  He smiled uneasily, raising his hands in a show of appeasement.  “If not, it’s cool.”

“No, it’s fine,” she answered quietly.  She lifted the tube of cream to him.  Sam shuffled closer and slowly sat beside her on the couch.  He took the cream, applied a little to his fingers, and reached closer.  Natasha shifted more to reveal the exit wound to him.  She jerked, both in pain and surprise, when he touched her.

“Sorry,” he murmured.

“It’s not you.”

He worked the cream in gently, reaching to the huge medical kit to find some sterile pads and bandages.  “What is it then?  Besides the obvious, of course.”  She knew what he was getting at.  There was a touch of something in his voice that she read easily.  Suspicion.  Doubt.  He didn’t trust her now.  After all, why would he?  The extent of this nightmare was rapidly becoming clear.  The organization for which she worked was hunting them down.  And he was only involved in this mess because of his friendship with Steve.  But more than that, he’d just learned during the encounter with the STRIKE Team that she’d shot Steve.  She supposed Steve hadn’t told him that.  Why the hell would he?

Natasha swallowed.  She didn’t know what to say, how to explain herself.  She didn’t want to.  Part of her felt she shouldn’t have to because what had happened in Crimea was between her and Steve.  It really wasn’t Sam’s business.  But a brusque dismissal, the urge to _close off_ and internalize it all, wasn’t part of who she wanted to be.  Now more than ever she needed to be the person Steve thought she was.  Still, she settled on deflecting, focusing on the surface issues because those were safer and easier to face.  “We have to get Steve out of there.  Right now.”  Her voice was nothing more than a whisper.

“I know,” Sam answered tensely.  There was no comfort to be had in his voice.  “But Stark’s right.  We can’t just charge down there, half-cocked.  SHIELD’s too powerful.  We need a plan of attack.”

She knew that.  The argument she and Stark had shared on the way to New York was only maybe an hour old, but it felt like a lifetime of impatient suffering had elapsed.  Apparently Stark had been able to trace their location in Wheaton thanks to the disposable cell phone; it had been an extremely fortunate thing they had left it on or he would have never reached them in time.  One small thing that had gone right in a sea of wrong.  She’d hastily explained the situation to Tony, that SHIELD had been infiltrated by HYDRA.  Stark knew more than most about HYDRA, given his father had been more than instrumental in stopping them during World War II.  She’d told Tony about Steve, that he’d sacrificed himself to SHIELD to give Sam and Natasha time to escape.  She’d wanted to go immediately to rescue Steve, but Tony had come out against that plan.  The logical side of her knew he was right, that an operation like that was going to be difficult at best.  Steve was likely being held in the detention level, which was not at all accessible, and SHIELD was not a force with which they should trifle.  But her heart wasn’t so willing to listen to reason.  If Tony had read into why she was so upset with having to wait, why she was so desperate to do this now when the trained soldier inside of her _knew_ damn well why they couldn’t, he didn’t say.  He’d only ushered them Sam and her off to take care of themselves while he took the drive and starting working on cracking into it.  This was wrong, so _wrong_ , to take even a moment for themselves in the face of what Steve was enduring.  This was hell.

Sam sighed.  “Steve’s strong.  He’ll be okay.”  Now he was trying to comfort her.  Maybe her misery was showing on her face.  She had no make-up, and her eyes were red-rimmed.  If she looked half as bad as she felt, there was no way he couldn’t notice it.  “He can take it, whatever it is.”

“You don’t know what…”  She didn’t finish.  She couldn’t.  What Rumlow had said…  _“The Winter Soldier’s working him over now.  Doing a real number on him.”_   The Winter Soldier.  _Barnes._   _“Rogers’ll break, as sure as day.”_

“What?” Sam prompted.

She couldn’t talk about it.  “We just need to get him out of there.”

“We will,” Sam said.

“You don’t know what SHIELD is capable of.  It’s not what we thought.”  _What I thought.  What any of us thought._ “But maybe I was just deluding myself.  I was a hired killer for years before I became a SHIELD agent.  I did… a lot of really terrible things.  So when I first joined SHIELD, I thought I was going straight.”  Sam unwrapped one of the pads and pressed it over the entrance wound.  Without his asking, she held it down as he worked to cover the back of her leg.  She chewed the inside of her lip, refusing to acknowledge the pain.  Any of the pain.  “But I guess I just traded in the KGB for HYDRA.”  Sam glanced up at her, reaching for the roll of gauze.  Natasha grunted a rueful laugh.  “I thought I knew whose lies I was telling, but I guess I can’t tell the difference anymore.”  _Maybe I never could._

“Somehow I think that’s part of the business.”  Sam offered a hint of a smile, but there was no humor behind it.  “And it seems like those really terrible things you’ve done are more recent than you’re letting on.”

So much for deflecting.  She jerked defensively.  She couldn’t help herself, and it wasn’t just because it hurt as he started wrapping the wound.  “I’ve made a lot of mistakes,” she softly admitted.

“Steve told me something horrible happened to him a couple of months ago, something that landed him on medical leave,” Sam said.  “I’m guessing it was you trying to kill him.”  Natasha closed her eyes against the sting of tears.  _God, get a hold of yourself._   Sam was silent for a moment, rolling the gauze tightly around her leg.  Natasha breathed, slow and steady.  It was all she could do to hang onto her control.  “I wasn’t kidding before, when I said he told me that you make him happy.”

“I know that,” she quietly responded.

“Whatever’s happened in the past, whatever they made you do…  SHIELD or HYDRA or the KGB or _whoever_ …  We’re in this now.  And we’re going to get Steve back and make them pay.”

“You think they made me do it?”  The question came of its own accord.  She hadn’t thought to ask it.  She hadn’t thought at all.  She was numb, lost again, staring at the coffee table through blurry eyes and with her heart dying in her chest.  But now that she’d asked it, she wanted an answer.  She _needed_ an answer.  It didn’t matter that they didn’t know each other.  Sam was totally ignorant of her beyond these last twelve horrific hours.  He didn’t know about her colored past, the blood in her ledger.  He didn’t know Black Widow beyond a few shots on TV from the Battle of New York.  She needed to know if he could trust her.  “Do you?”

Sam secured the bandages with tape and leaned back gingerly.  He watched her with narrowed eyes, analytic eyes.  Measuring her against whatever Steve had told him about her and what he’d observed and learned firsthand.  Looking for the truth, maybe, in the rumors and speculation.  “I think that Steve loves you a lot.  And I think you love him.  Whatever they made you…  Like I said, it’s in the past.  You can be whoever you want to be.”

Hearing someone else say that – no, not just say it.  _Believe it._   Hearing someone else have faith in her made it real.  Sam smiled, really and truly, and though there was still hesitation in his eyes, he wasn’t shining her on or placating her.  He was being honest.  Like Steve always was.  Honest and loyal to his morals and _true_.

Sam patted her leg and cleaned up the wrappers from the bandages.  Natasha gathered her composure with a deep, settling breath.  She grabbed her pants and carefully slid her legs into them.  Just as she was standing and testing the extent of the pain, JARVIS’ calm tone cut through the silence again.  “Agent Romanoff, Mr. Wilson.  Mr. Stark would like you to join him on his workshop on the 35th floor.  He has uncovered some information about the USB drive you brought him.”

Sam shared a worried look with her.  “Come on.  Let’s go see what this is all about.”

* * *

Like everything else in Stark Tower (Avengers Tower, apparently – when had that happened?), Tony’s workshop was ridiculously large, overly extravagant, and teeming with technology.  Natasha hadn’t been back to the Tower since right after the Battle of New York, and she’d forgotten what a playground for himself Stark had designed it to be.  The elevator deposited them on the 35th floor, and JARVIS allowed them through a series of glass doors equipped with some pretty hefty security measures.  The room beyond was huge, filled with work desks and tools and robots.  The New York City skyline was visible through the expanse of floor to ceiling windows that comprised the far wall, the buildings beyond draped in just the first hints of shadow as the summer afternoon wore into early evening.  The world looked disturbingly peaceful, completely unaware of the danger watching it.  The danger so deeply embedded into the organizations charged with protecting its freedoms and liberties.  If SHIELD was HYDRA, and SHIELD had its arms stretched into the US government and other governments around the world, then…  There was no telling how deep the damage went.

“Yo.  Over here.”  Tony was at one of his workstations, the biggest in the room.  A huge holographic interface was before him, glowing blue and white and green.  He was manipulating it, his hands flying through the air like he was conducting an orchestra through a fast-paced tune.

Natasha and Sam came closer, stepping around the egregious piles of things around the workshop.  Discarded tools.  Haphazardly placed materials.  Sam passed a counter loaded with parts for something.  At any given time, Tony was embroiled in half a dozen projects.  Some of the pieces were clearly parts of Iron Man: gauntlets, a repulsor cannon, metal plating painted gold.  Other things went to something similar but not exactly the same.  The innards of a robot arms.  Wrenches and screwdrivers.  Meters and probes.  Rods and bars, cables curling and embracing around them like muscles covering bones in an arm.  Half of some sort of head, the metallic skull oddly disturbing where it partially covered a nest of wires and computer chips inside.  A haunting face.  The head was connected via some fiber optic cables to a computer terminal, and a nearby screen seemed to be running through some diagnostics.  “What is all this?” Sam asked.

“Something I’m working on.  Not important right now.”  Natasha’s eyes lingered on the half empty skull, on the slanted eye sockets that reminded her of Iron Man but not quite enough, and ignored the tiny shudder itching at the small of her back.  Tony stood from his stool.  “You guys want some pizza?  Over there.”  He gestured to a steel table to the side, also cluttered with chaos, with tools and pads and about six boxes of pizza, significantly more than they could possibly eat.  “I didn’t know what you liked, so I had J order some of everything.”

Sam didn’t hesitate.  He limped over to the table and took a plastic plate and loaded it with a few slices of different types.  He handed that to Natasha.  She looked down on it, her face composed but her stomach roiling.  It looked greasy.  Sam was already well in the process of making a second plate for himself.  “Thanks.”

“No problem.  So this drive that you brought here–”  He tipped his head back to the computer workstation behind him, where Natasha could see the USB drive plugged into a Stark Industries hub.  “–isn’t your normal, garden-variety USB drive.”

“I should hope not,” Sam said, taking a bite from a slice of pepperoni, “considering what we had to go through to get it to you.”  Natasha fought not to flinch and made herself eat.

Tony cocked his head, pursing his lips as he looked through the data flying by on the holographic display.  “Yeah, well, this drive has an AI on it.  A very powerful one.  It keeps rewriting the contents of the disk to counter my commands.  If I had to wager a guess, I’d say it was designed to lower its defenses, so to speak, only in specific locations.  That list of places you mentioned, in all likelihood.  This program is like a goddamn sentinel.  It’s making getting at whatever data’s on it a challenge.  Can’t copy it.  Can’t break into it.  Can’t even delete it.”

Natasha had been afraid of this.  “You can’t hack it?”

“Trying, babe.  JARVIS is trying to fake it into thinking we’re one of its home bases.  I think we’re getting close.”  Tony manipulated a few of the readouts streaming by on the holographic display, squinting as he rapidly analyzed them.  “Yeah, I think so.  I mean, I hacked SHIELD once.  I feel like should be able to manage this.”  Tony Stark didn’t sound certain of himself.  That made Natasha even more shaken.

“And when you hacked SHIELD, you didn’t find any sign that SHIELD was HYDRA?” Sam asked dubiously.  There was a tense tone to his voice, not quite accusing, but not entirely comfortable, either.  She supposed he had a right to be.  He was an outsider to all of this, for all intents and purposes a civilian, and HYDRA had grown inside of SHIELD right under the noses of the world’s smartest men and best spies.  And right under the noses of the Avengers.

Tony didn’t get defensive.  “I’ve never trusted SHIELD.  And Rogers didn’t, either.”  Natasha couldn’t help but wonder how well Tony actually knew Steve, because he sure as hell had trusted SHIELD, at least enough to work for them.  Tony and Steve hadn’t hit it off at all in the beginning.  They’d been at each other’s throats (okay, they _all_ had been at each other’s throats) during the Chitauri incident.  But in the end they’d worked together, buried the hatchet so to speak, and gotten the job done.  Steve had kept in contact with Tony over the last couple of years, but maybe they’d been closer than Natasha had realized.  Close enough that maybe Steve had told Tony of his worries about SHIELD before Steve had even told her.  They should have gotten out then.  Left when they’d first started to realize that SHIELD wasn’t the symbol of justice and security they thought it was.

She closed her eyes, the echo of that argument in the lab aboard the helicarrier filling her head.  Her own words had been somehow prophetic.  _“Are you boys really that naïve?  SHIELD monitors potential threats.”_

_“Captain America’s on the threat list?”_

“I guess this explains why SHIELD had the HYDRA weapons,” Tony surmised.

“What about the other Avengers?” Natasha asked.

Tony cocked his head again.  “Haven’t seen Thor since the Greenwich incident.  Banner’s doing one of his things out in Africa.  Or India.”  He shrugged.  “I put a call into him, but when he goes on these trips for the good of humanity, he tends to not answer his phone.  What about Hawkeye?”

It was the one thing they hadn’t discussed during their harried flight from Wheaton to New York.  Tony had questions, questions he smartly hadn’t asked.  Natasha clenched her jaw.  She couldn’t think about it, couldn’t talk about it.  “Compromised,” was all she could say.

Tony was more socially perceptive than people realized.  He dropped the topic all based on the tightness of Natasha’s tone and the hard scowl on her face.  “Then it’s up to us to get the Cap out of there.  As soon as JARVIS gives me an answer as to what it is SHIELD wants so bad.”

“I am working on it, sir,” the AI responded.

“Well, put some damn speed on it,” Tony returned, not quite facetiously.  It wasn’t always easy to read Stark, but Natasha thought she saw genuine concern in his eyes.  He was certainly tense, though he was trying not to seem that way.  It was as though he’d seen through Natasha’s façade to how brittle she was beneath it and was therefore struggling to appear in control for her benefit.  After all, they’d come to him for help.  “I searched all over the internet and any opening I have within SHIELD for Project: Insight, but there’s nothing.  Whatever it is, it’s buried deep.”

“Steve said it was an algorithm,” Natasha quietly declared.

Tony’s brow wrinkled in confusion.  “Project: Insight?”

“No, whatever’s on the drive.”

“How did he know that?” Sam asked.

“Sitwell told him before he died,” Natasha answered.

“Sitwell’s dead, too?” Tony asked.  Natasha had told Tony most of what had happened, but she must have forgotten to mention that part.  Honestly, it was almost too much to explain.  He swallowed thickly, his Adam’s apple bobbing.  “You might have mentioned that.  What a fucking mess.  I kept telling everyone SHIELD was shit.  How much of it is HYDRA?”

There was no way to know.  “It makes sense that Sitwell was, considering he was the original courier for this thing,” Natasha said.   _Clint._ “The STRIKE Team.  Whoever or whatever is in charge of Project: Insight.”  _The Winter Soldier._   “The Secretary of Defense.”

“Pierce?” Tony asked.  Natasha nodded.  Tony grunted.  “Well, that settles that.  No way I’m showing up at his niece’s birthday party now.”  Natasha shared a confused look with Sam, but they didn’t have time to question.  “So Fury’s dead.  Sitwell’s dead.  Pierce is evil incarnate.  Rogers is a prisoner.  You’ve got some crazy-ass Russian super assassin chasing you down.  And Barton’s gone to the Dark Side.  What else?  Could there _be_ anything else?”  Tony shook his head.  “Where’s Hill?”

Natasha shook her head.  “No one has seen or heard from her since Fury was killed.”

“Fantastic,” Tony muttered.  He was working with the data coming at him again.  “Defected or dead.  So the shit has truly hit the fan.”

“Sir, the analysis has finished.  I believe we have gotten past the security failsafe,” JARVIS announced.

Tony jolted forward in excitement.  Sam set the remains of his pizza down.  “Finally,” he said, relief and anticipation coloring his voice.

“J, run the decryption,” Tony ordered.

“Already running it,” the AI responded.  “Accessing files.”

The holographic display seemed to explode as it flooded with data.  It was coming in a steady but chaotic stream, and the sphere of information grew until it encased all of them.  Natasha turned, her plate forgotten on a stool beside one of the workbenches.  Her eyes narrowed as she beheld the wealth of information rushing at them in a dazzling show of glowing numbers, letters, and images.  “What is all of this?” she asked.

Sam looked about as flabbergasted.  “Stark,” he called, tipping his head toward a section of the display to the left of them.  In the three-dimensional representation of the file tree, this node was labeled “Project: Insight”.  Tony came over, staring at the spot suspiciously.  He grabbed the node and pulled it closer, inspecting it in his hand for moment before shooting his arms out to either side and opening the node.

What was inside it was immediately obvious.

“Is that…” Natasha whispered.

“Yeah,” Tony answered unhappily.  “It probably goes without saying but this is the _last_ time I ever consult on anything for SHIELD.”  The schematics for three helicarriers floated in front them.  They were state of the art behemoths, equipped with new repulsor engines (the design of which could have only come from Stark) and new weaponry that Natasha didn’t recognize.  This was Project: Insight, and it was very clearly meant for one purpose and one purpose alone.

To bring about HYDRA’s new world order.

“Holy shit,” Sam breathed as Tony rotated the three-dimensional schematic of one of the helicarriers.  “That is a lot of firepower.”

“Fury approached me right after the helicarrier almost went down during the Battle of New York for my help in designing better engines.  These ships can maintain continuous suborbital flight.  The engines work on modified arc reactor technology.  Once they’re up there…”  Tony glanced at Natasha, his face pale with worry.  He didn’t need to finish.  Once the helicarriers went up, they weren’t coming down.  These weren’t designed to fight a war.  These were designed to stop a war before it even started.  They were designed to be aloft and unreachable.  They were first strike weapons, and Pierce had his finger on their triggers.

“So this is it?  This is what they want this drive for?” Sam asked, rotating slowly and looking at the designs and specifications with a mixture of horror and anger.

“No,” Natasha said.  Suddenly everything Pierce had said about Fury dragging his feet made more sense.  “These helicarriers must already be built.  Fury was trying to delay their launch.  That’s why they killed him.”  She squinted, seeing another node in the file tree.  She walked closer.  It was entitled “Lemurian Star”.  She pointed at it.  “Tony, that’s the ship Steve got this from.  The _Lemurian Star._ ”

Tony dismissed the schematics of the helicarriers with a brush of his hand and reached lithely across the way to grab the node Natasha had suggested.  He opened that.  Dozens of files with WorldCom’s logo appeared.  “What is this?” he asked.  “Satellite launch data?”  He looked through the data for a moment.  “WorldCom was in charge of developing the Insight satellites.”  WorldCom, the company that had put that USB hub in the bunker in Camp Lehigh.  WorldCom, where Zola had hid himself.  “This is…  It’s some kind of simulation.  Beta-testing a model.  JARVIS, can we run this?”

“I am attempting to allocate enough memory and processing power,” JARVIS calmly explained.  “My calculations indicate I will need to pull in the computing cluster from Malibu.”

“Do it.”

It was silent for a few tense moments as JARVIS worked.  The three of them waited as patiently as they could manage.  Then the display seemed to explode again with activity, images and information radiating outward in a dazzling array.  Thousands upon thousands of names were floating around them, a cloud of _people_ from all over the world.  Natasha caught pictures.  _Matthew Ellis.  Peter Parker.  Stephen Strange.  Michael Lindon.  Maria Hill.  Carol Danvers.  Virginia Potts.  Bruce Banner._   The list went on and on.Their names.  _Samuel Wilson.  Anthony Stark.  Steven Rogers.  Natasha Romanoff._   “What the hell is this?” Sam breathed.  A counter in the middle of the display was rapidly increasing.  “What the hell?”

“The algorithm,” Tony said, his eyes widening with dawning realization.  “It’s accessing information across the internet by the terabyte.”

“SHIELD’s databases,” Natasha whispered, horrified.  _Oh, God, what have we done?_

“Not just that.  Bank records.  Medical records.  Taxes.  Social networking.  Goddamn test scores.  Christ, it’s getting information from _everywhere_ and running it in real-time, crunching it and reducing it to a posterior probability for each individual through discriminant analysis…  Holy shit.”  He looked at Natasha, white-faced and alarmed.  “It’s using people’s pasts to predict their futures.  It’s evaluating who’s likely to become a threat.”

“To what?” Sam asked.

“To HYDRA.”

The counter was climbing and climbing.  Tens of thousands of people.  _Hundreds_ of thousands of people.  Natasha shook her head, struggling to wrap her mind around this.  There were numbers accompanying each person.  Coordinates, derived from GPS.  “It’s a targeting algorithm.  That’s what Zola developed.  A targeting algorithm.”  Her lips hardly moved around the soft words.  “It’s identifying and locating targets for the Insight carriers.”  She whirled and looked at Tony.  “Project: Insight.  _This_ is the insight!  It’s figuring out who will rise against HYDRA and striking them first before they even have a chance!”

“Jesus,” Sam whispered, his eyes wide and his form tight with fear.  “Seven hundred thousand people…”

Tony shook his head, pulling the final statistics toward him to look them over.  “That’s not total.  That’s the projected death toll from the first strike along the eastern seaboard.”  Tony’s face was white.  “There are more than twenty million names on this list.”

Twenty million.  Twenty million that would be dead.  Annihilated.  Eradicated.  _Twenty million._

This was what Steve had sacrificed himself to stop.  Twice he’d given his life to prevent HYDRA from destroying the world.  This time he’d done it without even knowing the extent of the evil they’d faced.  It had only been a hint, a whisper of things stirring in the shadows.  Seeing it now, the ugly, vicious truth of what they’d permitted to grow inside of something in which they’d believed…  Natasha felt her eyes burn again.  _This_ was SHIELD.  It was a lie.  It had _become_ a lie.

No, it always had been a lie.  She’d just been too stupid and eager to redeem herself to see it.

“Sir, I am detecting an aberration in the computing cluster.  It seems the AI from the SHIELD drive is interacting with our system.”  If JARVIS could sound rattled, he was certainly doing it.

Tony looked… alarmed.  Verging on panic.  “What’s it doing?”

“Trying to access my subroutines in the Tower,” JARVIS answered.

“Lock it out!”

“I am trying, sir, but I–”  JARVIS’ worried voice cut off abruptly.  The holographic display just disappeared, taking all of the data from the simulation with it, and the lights in the workshop went out.

Tony stepped into the center of the shadowy room, looking around like he didn’t understand how this could be possible.  He probably didn’t.  “JARVIS?” he called, though it was fairly obvious the AI was not going to answer.  “JARVIS!  Fuck.”

“What’s happening?” Sam asked.

“Hell if I know!  Obviously the defenses on this drive turned into offenses!  Shit.”  He ran around to the desk where the USB drive was plugged into the Tower’s computer system.  He yanked it free and tapped furiously at the keyboard for a second.  Nothing happened.  “This is bad.”

Natasha whirled, looking at Tony with wide eyes.  “Stark, we need to get out of here.”

Tony’s eyes were focused on the computer screens in front of him.  “No, it’s coming back up now.  It’s–”  The lights jolted back on, chasing away the dimness.  The machines in Tony’s lab came to life with a soft whir that rapidly escalated into something more disturbing and chaotic.  His robots were squealing, jolting and squirming like they were somehow in pain.  That skull that had been connected to the computer sparked, and its one eye shone bright blue.  _Everything_ seemed to be going haywire.  “What the hell is this?” Tony asked, abandoning trying to work at the computer in lieu of staring at his workshop like he couldn’t believe what he was seeing.  “Some goddamn virus?”

Suddenly all of the computer monitors flashed back on, only they were all filled with one thing.  A red skull, and below that tentacles.  The cephalopod of HYDRA.  Natasha recognized it immediately from the footage Zola had shown them in the bunker and SSR’s old files.  JARVIS’ voice, twisted and distorted, echoed through the workshop.  It was deep and ominous, seemingly vibrating the top of the Tower.  “Cut off one head, and two more shall take its place.”

Then it was all over again.  It was _silent_.

The three of them were still, frightened and shocked, looking around Tony’s workshop.  No one dared to speak or move or even really think, waiting in dread for the next thing to happen.  It happened, though not with the bang they all feared.  “What is that?” Sam asked, his eyes distant.  He looked up, confusion splayed all over his face.  “Do you hear that?”

Natasha heard nothing for a long moment, holding her breath and willing the pounding of her heart to cease so that she could listen.  Then there was something.  A fast-paced, rhythmic _thud thud thud_.  It was distant, muffled, but distinct and getting louder.  She turned, looking around and wondering and feeling increasingly certain that they were in serious danger, before her eyes found the source of the sound outside.  In the sky.  Coming toward them.

 _“Take cover!”_   Her scream came only a second before the quinjet coming at them started firing.  The bullets seemed to tear through the Tower in slow motion, careening in rapid succession from jet’s minigun underneath its belly and driving into the 35th floor.  The windows shattered in an explosion of glass, and the workshop was destroyed all around them.  Natasha dove, hiding behind one of the workbenches, Sam following her.  Tony dropped to the floor, pressing as low as he could and crawling to another desk for protection.  The cacophony of bullets striking equipment and the floor and the desks was deafening, and while the assault endlessly persisted, all they could do was cower and pray.

Eventually it ended.  Natasha had drawn her handgun (not that that would do any good against a quinjet), and she turned to look over the desk.  The jet that had been hovering right outside the Tower was gone.  _Shit._   “JARVIS!” Tony shouted.  He was scrambling over the debris, trying to stay low while reaching Sam and Natasha.  “JARVIS, goddamn it!  Fucking answer me!  Shit!”  There was nothing.  Obviously whatever defensive mechanism HYDRA had put onto the USB drive had infiltrated Stark’s computer system, JARVIS included.  Tony looked equal parts terrified and furious.  “You two are rapidly turning out to be more trouble than you’re worth,” he sniped, his eyes quickly devouring their appearances to ensure they weren’t hurt.  “SHIELD?”

Natasha nodded.  “They want the drive,” she declared.  The Tower was eerily silent again, filled with only the moans and creaks of the destroyed equipment, the crackling of small fires, and the sparking of electricity.  “We have to get out of here.  They can’t get it.”

Tony tossed the USB stick to her.  “You two go.  Without JARVIS, you need to take the stairs.”  He rolled onto his back, breathing heavily.  Neither Sam nor Natasha moved, staring at him like he was crazy.  Tony stood, throwing his arms out toward the rear of the workshop where there were rows of cylindrical storage units that Natasha hadn’t even noticed until now.  One exploded outward, the cover blowing off, and Tony’s armor shot through the smoldering wreckage of the workshop toward them.  It came apart midair, dissembling in an elegant and well-coordinated show of sleek red and gold before encasing Tony.  The whole thing took a second, and a second later Iron Man stood in front of them.

“Whoa,” Sam breathed.

Iron Man glared at them.  “Am I speaking Swahili here?  _Go!”_

Natasha clenched the drive in her palm, holding the gun before her as she scrambled to her feet.  She kept low, darting across the workshop, Sam close behind her.  She heard the sound of rotors cutting through the air again.  The quinjet was back, firing into the building.  Natasha ducked low, diving across the tiles and yanking Sam with her.  She rolled, slamming her shoulder into another workbench.  She heard the roar of gunfire, the bullets cutting into the floor and walls and ceiling.  Drywall and glass rained down on them.  She heard more than saw Iron Man stalking across the workshop, his palm repulsors raised and firing at the jet.  It swerved, banking to avoid the shots.  Quickly the pilots disengaged, maybe realizing they couldn’t contend with Iron Man.  Not likely, though.

Natasha climbed back to her feet, ignoring the pulse of pain through her leg, and sprinted to the stairwell outside the lab while Tony provided them with cover.  The glass doors and walls that had separated the workshop from the corridor beyond it were shattered, and she could see the doors to the stairs beside the dark and idle elevator.  They could get there.  _Run.  Get away.  Take the drive._ Take it where?  There was nowhere safe from SHIELD.   _Don’t think about it now.  Run!_

A glance to Sam was all she needed to communicate that it was time, and together the two of them raced to the stairwell doors.  However, before they reached them, the thick slabs of metal burst open, kicked clean off their hinges.  Natasha skidded to a stop, bringing the gun up and pushing Sam back behind her.  Her eyes widened.  _No._  They couldn’t escape.  _No!_

The Winter Soldier stalked through the entrance.

“Shit,” Sam breathed in her ear.  Natasha quickly squeezed off a couple of shots, but the Soldier was faster, raising his metal arm to block the bullets.  They fell as crumpled lumps at his feet, useless.  Behind him, a slew of STRIKE soldiers followed, their rifles raised and aimed at Sam and Natasha.  Natasha fired at them, taking down one, but there were too many and the Winter Soldier was upon them.  His face was dark and emotionless, without recognition.  She recognized him, though, and now there was no doubt.  _Barnes._

The metal arm snapped toward her.  She dodged the strike, but just barely, ducking and delivering a sweeping kick of her own.  Her foot struck true, but it was like hitting a cement wall and he hardly fell back.  “Run!” she cried at Sam, using the split second of the Soldier’s retreat to spring back toward the workshop.  She didn’t get very far.  The Winter Soldier reached for her faster than she could prevent, grabbing her ankle and hauling her closer.  Sam yelled in anger, launching himself at the assassin.  The Soldier blocked both of the punches he threw at him, but that caused him to release Natasha.  She scrambled away, glancing over her shoulder and observing in horror as Sam was bodily thrown across the room.  He collided with a desk with a howl of pain and slumped.  “Sam!  _Sam!_ ”

She didn’t have time to see if Sam was okay.  The Winter Soldier was on her again, a silent, icy wrath bearing down on his prey.  She kicked at him, struggling to get her feet beneath her, to summon some measure of control and strength so she could fight.  The other soldiers were swarming, surrounding her.  She scrambled to run, but there was nowhere to go now.  She couldn’t get away.  She couldn’t–

“Get back!”  Iron Man landed in front of her with a thud.  The palm repulsors were firing in a quick volley, the blasts hitting the soldiers in the chests and legs and dropping them.  The Winter Soldier wasn’t dissuaded, however, attacking Natasha anew while Iron Man was distracted.  Natasha blocked the blows, but the Soldier was too fast and too strong.  He was driven, and she was his mission.  She knew it.  A crack across the face with the flesh and blood fist sent her staggering, blood filling her mouth from where her teeth gashed her cheek.  She never hit the ground even though her feet stumbled beneath her because the metal hand grabbed her throat and yanked her closer.  The gun slipped from her fingers as she grabbed the Winter Soldier’s wrist.  Those eyes.  Barnes’ eyes.  She was staring right into them.   She was staring, and he was choking her.

“Drop her, you asshole,” Tony ordered.  Iron Man’s face was locked in its perpetual scowl, but Stark’s voice was infinitely more threatening.  The Winter Soldier stayed still, unbothered, hardly even glancing at Tony.  The pressure of his fingers shifted, not quite as strong but nothing near to releasing her, but Natasha was able to suck in a breath.  Her own fingers were digging into the grip about her neck, trying to pry and claw it loose, but she couldn’t.  Her other hand clenched the USB drive tighter.  “Let her go!”  Tony shouted.  “Do it!”

The Winter Soldier’s eyes hardened with a glint Natasha well recognized – the intention to kill – but before he could snap her neck, Tony barreled into him.  The vicious grip was gone and Natasha was falling.  She hit the floor hard, her injured leg crumpling instantly, but she crawled away toward Sam who was dazedly scrambling toward her as well.  Behind them, Tony and the Winter Soldier were locked in battle.  This was different from how Steve had fought the Winter Soldier.  That brief encounter had been about speed, about strength, about skill.  This was simply about _power_ , the Winter Soldier’s metal arm pounding into Iron Man’s armor, and Iron Man pounding back.  The mechanical whir of Iron Man’s joints flexing and twisting was loud as he grappled with the Winter Soldier, throwing the other man into one of the work desks.  It crumpled completely, but the Soldier was back on his feet instantly, tackling Iron Man.  Tony spun with surprising alacrity, dislodging the other man’s grip and throwing another punch.  The Soldier caught Tony’s fist in his own, and for an endless moment it was a contest of their opposing strengths, boots digging into the floor as the Winter Soldier tried to drive Tony back into Sam and Natasha.  Stark’s armor crumpled under the strength of the metal hand.  Iron Man opened his hand and launched a repulsor blast at the Soldier, and it slammed into his chest and disrupted his stance.  Tony jetted away.  “Run!” he bellowed at Natasha and Sam.

 _No.  No more running._   Natasha crawled forward, eyeing the approaching slew of STRIKE soldiers in terror, reaching for her fallen gun.  She grabbed it, slammed the USB drive to the floor at her knees, and pressed the muzzle of the gun right on top of it.  “Stop!  Stop, or I swear I’ll destroy it!”  At first, no one followed her orders.  Gritting her teeth, she fired the gun into the ceiling, and somehow that shot was louder than the melee around them.  “Stop right now!  I mean it!”

The Winter Soldier caught sight of her, the barrel of her gun poised to fire on the drive.  Natasha stared at him, her eyes hard and hot, panting but not wavering.  “I mean it,” she warned again.  “Back off.”

The Winter Soldier had no choice, and Tony retreated to stand in front of Sam and Natasha, his armor dented and scraped from the fight.  For the moment, at least, they were at a stand-off.  The Winter Soldier’s eyes hardened as he stared at his adversaries, at his mission trapped precariously between the tip of Natasha’s gun and the tiles of the floor.  Then his eyes glazed, like he was listening to something else.  He raised his gloved hand to his mouth and said something softly and lowly, something Natasha couldn’t quite hear.

Suddenly the computer screens that were still intact and functional inside the workshop blared to life.  JARVIS’ voice flooded the room, not quite right but closer to his normal tone.  “Incoming message from SHIELD, sir.”

 _What?_   But before anyone could say anything, let alone get an explanation or stop it, an image appeared on the screens surrounding them.  Their small group focused on a larger screen slightly to the left attached above one of the workbenches.  The right corner was damaged, but even with the spidery cracks reaching down and across the display, what they were seeing was obvious.  And more than terrifying.  _No.  No, no, no!_

It was Pierce, and he was standing next to Steve.  Steve, who was on his knees, his hands bound behind his back and gagged.  Steve, who was half naked and covered in blood and so badly beaten he was almost unrecognizable.  Steve, who was barely conscious, shivering with his eyes glazed and lidded and lost.  Steve, who had Clint, Rumlow, and Rollins surrounding him, and each had his gun aimed at him.  _Oh, God._   Natasha’s heart broke, _shattered_ , and she couldn’t breathe.  She couldn’t think.  She couldn’t do anything, her eyes burning with tears and her body shaking.  This was what it was coming to.  All of this, dissolving to this inevitable moment.  She should have known, should have been ready to deal with it, _prepared_.  But she wasn’t.  _Oh, Steve, no…  Please, God!_ “No,” she whispered.

“Jesus,” Sam whispered.  He grabbed Natasha’s shoulder, clambering to his feet. 

“Agent Romanoff,” Pierce said.  He looked at he always did, sharply dressed and composed, like this was business as usual.  Like having Captain America bound and bleeding at the mercy of his thugs was fucking business as usual.  “This is the end of my patience.  That drive does not belong to you.  Surrender it to us, or we’ll kill him.”  Barton moved, raising his handgun to jab the muzzle into Steve’s temple.

“What the fuck…”  Tony breathed.  He was aghast.  “You sick son of a bitch!”  The STRIKE agents were surrounding them now, their rifles pointed at the trio, and the Winter Soldier watched dispassionately.  Natasha was able to tear her eyes from Steve for only a moment, but when she glanced at Barnes she found him unbothered.  Unknowing.  His best friend from childhood was being used as leverage in some twisted hostage situation, and he was completely uncaring.

But she couldn’t spare another thought in rage or disgust, because Steve screamed.  Her eyes snapped back to the video call before she could stop herself, and she could do nothing as she saw Rumlow strike Steve in the chest with a stun baton.  The cry was muffled, short, and ragged, something that spoke of being pushed even further, pushed long past a breaking point.  It was raw and desperate, a keening thing that choked off when Steve ran out of breath.  Rumlow was vicious, not letting up for a second even as Steve slumped.  Rollins’ grip in his hair was the only thing holding him up.

“Stop it,” Natasha demanded, unable to hold her tears back any longer.  “Stop it!  Stop hurting him!”

“Leave him alone!” Sam raged.  “What the fuck is the matter with you people?”

Tony’s voice cracked.  “Stop!  You’re killing him!”

Rumlow did stop.  For a second, just long enough for Steve to catch his breath.  Then he jabbed the baton into Steve’s other side, dragging it up his chest, dangerously close to his sternum.  The stick crackled with electricity.  Steve wailed again, convulsing.  “Stop it!  _Stop it!”_

Pierce nodded slightly, and Rumlow backed off, leaving Steve gasping and sobbing through the gag.  “I want that drive back,” Pierce said.  “Either you hand it over right now or we’ll kill him.  We’re getting what we want, Agent Romanoff.  Question is: how much more do you want Captain Rogers to suffer for it?”  Natasha was quivering, watching as Steve fought to stay conscious.  She didn’t know if he could see her.  And she didn’t know if he had any idea he was being used as a bargaining chip.  Her hand shook where it was clenched around the gun.  “Decide now.  I’m through playing games.”

“Natasha, don’t.”  Tony turned, his face white and his eyes filled with horror.  “You _can’t_.”

Pierce’s response to that was another nod at Rumlow, and the sadistic bastard pulled the stun baton back so that Steve could see it charging up with power.  Then he stabbed it into an already gaping wound on Steve’s shoulder.  Rollins pushed Steve forward, digging the tip of the baton even deeper inside his body.  Steve screamed until he couldn’t anymore, jerking mindlessly.  Rumlow’s face was picture of malice, of cruel enjoyment, and he kept the pressure on, pushing deeper and deeper until either Steve died or…

“Is this really what you want?” Pierce asked.  He stepped closer to the camera.  “You love him, Agent Romanoff.”

“What?” Tony whispered.

Natasha shuddered, mouth falling open limply, tears rolling unabated down her cheeks.  Her fingers loosened on the gun even more until it was slipping from her grip.  She couldn’t think.  _She couldn’t do this._

“You love him,” Pierce repeated.  “I know you do.  Is _this_ what you want?”  Steve wailed again, contorting and seizing under the torture.  The horrors he’d endured were painted all over his body.  Unwillingly, Natasha whimpered.  She looked, but she couldn’t make herself see.  “I bet after what happened in Russia you promised him you wouldn’t hurt him ever again.  Didn’t you?”  Some small part of Natasha _knew_ Pierce was playing her.  Manipulating her.  Using her emotions against her.  Exploiting the very things she’d always been afraid would be exploited if she ever let her heart open.  But that small part was drowning under the ocean of terror and misery flooding her.  “You promised him, didn’t you?”

_“Promise me you won’t let me hurt you again.”_

_“You won’t.”_

Steve was losing consciousness.  He was barely awake, barely even struggling with the relentless voltage jolting over and inside his body.  Natasha watched, feeling like she was clinging to the last shred of her sanity.  Her mind knew one thing.  But her heart was screaming something else, suffering and dying right along with Steve, and she couldn’t make herself accept the right course.  She couldn’t.  It was selfish and incredibly _stupid_ , but she couldn’t.  If she surrendered that drive, if Pierce got his hands on the targeting algorithm for Project: Insight, twenty million people were at risk.  The life of one man, no matter who that one man was, could not compare with the death of twenty million people.  She _knew_ this, but logic wasn’t strong enough to combat her driving need to save Steve.

She couldn’t bear to lose him.  Not now.  Not ever.  She loved him far too much.

“Let him go.”  She hadn’t thought to speak.  Hadn’t thought to grab the USB drive and hold it tight in her palm and stand.  “Let him go, and I’ll give it to you.”

“No!” Tony snapped.  Iron Man’s faceplate came open, and he whirled on her.  Natasha feared for a minute that he would actually fight her to get that drive, to stop her from doing this.  But he didn’t.  And Steve was still screaming, driving her, pushing her to make this stop.  To end it, by whatever means necessary.  “Natasha, you can’t do this!  He wouldn’t want you to–”

“Let him go!” she shouted.  “Or I promise that you’ll never get this back.  _Never._ ”

Pierce stared at her, perhaps analyzing the veracity of her own threat.  It was an empty one.  They were completely surrounded. Even with Iron Man, the odds were not in their favor.  Still, Pierce realized it was a risk, one he could perhaps not afford to take.  So he nodded at Rumlow again.  Rumlow backed off, pulling the stun baton from Steve’s body.  Clint stepped away as well, dropping his gun and holstering it.  And Rollins released Steve, too.  Steve pitched forward immediately, smacking into the floor.  Natasha forced herself to be still, to watch him.  He was still breathing.  Barely.  It was hardly anything at all.  “Your turn,” Pierce calmly declared.

Natasha felt rooted to the floor.  Doubt splayed across her mind.  She knew she shouldn’t trust them.  She knew that Steve wouldn’t want this.  She knew that it wasn’t right.  Trading the world’s safety for Steve’s life _wasn’t right_.  She knew it in her bones, in every strained beat of her heart, in the quiet places of her soul where all the blackness hadn’t reached.  Where her love for Steve kept her pure and noble.  She _knew_ it wasn’t right.  But she couldn’t stop herself.  She didn’t stop herself.  And neither Sam nor Tony stopped her.  One foot stepped forward.  Then the other.  She squeezed the drive in her palm hard enough that the connector cut into her flesh.  She stopped in front of the Winter Soldier and reached toward him.  And she opened her hand, offering up the payment for Steve’s life.

He took it.

Sam closed his eyes.  Tony swore.

And something inside Natasha died.

The Winter Soldier looked at the USB drive in his metal hand for a moment but only that and nothing more.  Then he tucked it safely inside his combat vest.  He murmured something low to his men that were still alive, and they headed to the side of the workshop where the windows had once been.  The quinjet returned, and its rear hatch opened.  The pilots maneuvered the aircraft near to the building, close enough that the soldiers could leap across the distance from the workshop to the ramp of the jet.  The Winter Soldier was the last to go.  He didn’t even look back.  The ramp closed, and the jet used its thrusters to get far enough away from the Tower to fire up its main engines.  A breath later, it was gone.

_Gone._

Natasha turned back to the video call.  Pierce was still standing there.  If he was relieved at having reacquired his data, it didn’t show on his placid face.  He turned after a beat, looking back on Rumlow, Barton, and Rollins.  Steve was laying helplessly on the floor between them, still breathing shallowly, clearly in agony.  His eyes were closed.  Pierce looked down on him with a small shake of his head.  “Kill him,” he ordered.

“You goddamn lying bastard!” Tony raged.  “Fucking son of a bitch!”

“You should know by now, Black Widow.”  Pierce smiled smugly.  “SHIELD doesn’t negotiate.”  And he just walked away.

“No,” Sam whispered, horrified.  He turned to Tony.  “We gotta do something!”

Tony didn’t waste a second.  He closed the faceplate on Iron Man and fired the rockets in his boots, zooming out of the destroyed workshop and shooting into the evening sky beyond Stark Tower.  He was chasing after the quinjet, desperately trying to repair her monumental mistake.

Natasha wasn’t watching, though.  She couldn’t look away as Rollins kicked Steve viciously in the stomach.  She couldn’t do anything as the bastard wove his hand through Steve’s hair again and yanked and dragged him back onto his knees.  She couldn’t speak, couldn’t feel, couldn’t _think_ as Rumlow backhanded his prisoner.  Steve slumped and choked, blood dribbling from his lips.  Rollins hauled him upright again.  “You gonna beg now, Cap?” Rumlow asked, sneering.  She heard Steve groan, a garbled something she couldn’t make out, and Rumlow laughed.  “Too fucking late.”  The STRIKE commander glanced back at Clint.  “Shoot him, Barton.  Go ahead.  Put him out of his misery.”

Natasha shook her head helplessly.  _No._   Clint pulled his gun loose again.  “No, please…”  He aimed it at Steve’s chest.  “Clint, no!”  Clint’s eyes narrowed, cruel and heartless.  His finger squeezed the trigger.  _“No!”_

A single shot rang out.

And the video feed died.


	13. Chapter 13

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Thank you all so much for your comments! Well, my wonderful readers, onward we go. Just a fair warning for medical squickiness in this chapter. And fair warning: the next few chapters are going to be tough on our favorite couple (like the last ones haven't been?). Hang with me; I promise it will be okay.

The lights in the Triskelion flickered.  They were supposed to shut off completely, but they didn’t.  Still, it was enough for Clint, and it all too conveniently hid the shift of his gun upward and to the left.  He did it fast and pulled the trigger faster, and the bullet that should have hit Rogers in the chest hit Rollins in the neck instead.  The man howled in pain and shock, letting Rogers go.  As quick as Clint was, though, he wasn’t quick enough to turn and get his gun on Rumlow before the other man was coming at him with the stun baton.  Clint knew how high they had the weapon turned to; anything more than a glancing blow would probably knock him out if not kill him.  He caught the strike with his forearm, pulling on the trigger of his gun, but Rumlow already had a hand on his wrist.  The STRIKE commander twisted, and Clint growled in pain and frustration as his shot went wide and his fingers went limp.  His gun clattered to the floor.

“Barton, you fucking liar,” snarled Rumlow.  “I knew you were playing us.  Knew you were a coward!”  The two were locked in a contest of strengths, Rumlow trying to push the stun baton toward Clint and Clint trying just as desperately to hold him back.  “What did you think, huh?  You could be the hero this time?  Get Rogers out of here?”

Clint snapped his foot forward and clipped Rumlow right in the groin.  He gasped, breaking his stance and stumbling back.  Clint went after him, balling his right fist and driving it into Rumlow’s face.  He snatched Rumlow’s wrist, twisting powerfully and spinning the dislodged stun baton into his own hand.  He was relentless, hitting as hard as he could for every punch and kick these assholes had levied upon Steve in his presence, losing himself in his rage.  A few more vicious strikes had Rumlow wheezing up against the wall.  Rumlow’s battered face twisted into a scowl.  “You think you can stop us?  There are no prisoners with HYDRA.  There’s control and order, and order only comes through pain.”  He spat a bloody mouthful to the floor.  “You like pain, don’t you, Barton.  Don’t worry.  You’ll get yours.”

“How about you get yours first?  Let’s see how much you like this, asshole,” Clint snapped, and he rammed the crackling baton into Rumlow’s midriff.  The man screamed and howled, jolting with the discharge.  Clint yanked it away after only a second, but that was enough to render the bastard unconscious.  He slumped into a messy heap to the floor.

Clint stood, breathing heavily for a second, before tossing the stun baton aside.  He dropped to a crouch, fishing around inside Rumlow’s combat vest and pockets for the remote device that controlled the locking mechanism on Rogers’ cuffs.  He found it fairly easily, and he scrambled across the cold concrete floor over to Rogers.  “Steve?” he called quietly.  He swallowed the strained thundering of his heart, feeling sick (so goddamn sick) when he looked Steve over.  He was laying prone, covered in blood and unmoving.  Was he breathing?  Clint jabbed his hand to Steve’s carotid artery and found his heartbeat to be a weak, fast flutter against his fingertips.  And his chest was moving with small, hitched rasps.  He was alive somehow but in really bad shape.  Really bad.  “Steve?  It’s Clint.  Can you hear me?”  He thumbed the release on the control device, and the cuffs immediately unlocked.  He carefully but quickly pulled them away.  After that, he undid the gag and worked it out from between Steve’s reddened teeth.  “Cap, open your eyes.  I need to get you out of here.  Come on!”

Nothing.  Honestly, he didn’t know why he expected anything.  Steve had been beaten and tortured senseless.  He tried not to think about it, about the role he’d had to play in that hellishness, but it was right in front of his eyes so it was pretty damn hard to ignore it.  _Feel bad about it later.  Save his life now._

The communicator in his ear crackled to life.  “All clear?”  Carter sounded breathless and a tad frantic.

“Affirmative.  Can you get in?”

There was a pause.  “Yes.”  The door to the cell opened, and Carter came inside.  She was dressed in a SHIELD uniform, black leather and boots, and she had her gun drawn.  On her back she carried a black bag.  Its circular shape was a dead giveaway that it was Steve’s shield.  She saw Rogers’ still form on the cold floor and looked understandably rattled.  “You jumped the gun,” she said to Clint.

“Had to,” he replied.  The power interruption, as brief as it had been, had done its job and thankfully disrupted the detention block’s security measures enough to defeat the biometric scanners and door locks.  But it should have been more than that.  He had no idea if the way out was clear now.  It would have to be.  Honestly, there had been no way to wait for Hill’s signal.  If he had, Steve would be dead.  “Come on.  Help me get him up.”  They each took one wrist as gently as they could and got Steve’s arms around their shoulders.  “Okay.  Up!”  They rose, pulling Steve with them.  That got a reaction.  He moaned miserably, sagging heavily, and Carter nearly went down with the weight.  “You got this?” Clint asked.

“Yeah.  I’m okay!” she gasped back, straightening.  She holstered her gun and wrapped her arm around Steve’s waist to better her balance and his.  “Let’s go.”

They shuffled out into the corridor, where red lights flashed in alarm over the brief power failure.  It wasn’t easy with Steve barely conscious and essentially dragging them down.  He was two hundred some odd pounds of sheer muscle mass, boneless and helpless between them.  Clint held his gun in front of him, praying they could move fast enough and be fortunate enough to slip to the elevator without detection.  They were in the heart of HYDRA down here.  Nothing was going to be that easy.

Two guards caught them turning the corner.  Clint shot them both, trying not to make fatal wounds if he could.  The one thing he’d learned over the last twenty-four hours was that it was damn impossible to determine who the hell was bad and who was good.  HYDRA had its tentacles so deep into SHIELD that everything was blurred and indistinct.  Were these Pierce’s men, loyal minions to his cause?  Or were they just soldiers of SHIELD, following orders and not realizing of what they were a part?  There was no way to know.  “This way,” Carter softly declared, hauling Steve a little tighter against her slight form and turning them in the opposite direction.

“Not the main elevator?” Clint asked warily.

“We’ll never get out that way without notice.  There’s a freight elevator at the rear of the block.  It won’t operate if it detects personnel in it, but my contact in IT said he was able to hack it.”

Clint didn’t appreciate the abrupt change in their plan.  Not that they had had time to form much of plan.  “How do you know you can trust this guy?” he hissed suspiciously, struggling with Steve’s weight suddenly while Sharon fumbled with her ID badge at a (thankfully deserted) security checkpoint.

Carter pressed the badge to the scanner.  “How do I know I can trust you?”  Her voice was even, level, but her sideways glance spoke of her wariness.

Clint gritted his teeth.  She had a point, and he didn’t have the time, energy, or will to argue with it.  The door obediently slid open, and they re-established their grips on Steve and went onward.  A few tense minutes passed, each second stretching miserably with fear as it bled away.  Steve was shivering, struggling for every breath, and quite a few of his rattling exhalations were married with moans or whispered words Clint couldn’t quite hear.  _Bucky.  Nat._   That turned his stomach even more.  “Stay with us, Cap,” he implored.

“There,” Carter said breathlessly.  At the end of the shadowy hall, two double doors were tightly sealed.  They staggered down there as quickly as they could.  She left him with Steve, grabbing the ID badge again and thrusting it to the scanner beside the elevator doors.  Nothing happened.  “Shit,” she whispered, looking up at the lights above the doors.  They were dark.  She turned back to Clint.  “Give me yours.”

Clint fumbled to do that, keeping Steve upright with one arm and fishing around in his combat vest for the ID badge.  He pulled it free and tossed it to her, but his worked about as well.  They stood still and useless and uncertain for what felt like forever.  Steve suddenly slipped from Clint’s arms.  “Oh, no, Cap.  Up!  Carter!”

Sharon was dismayed, quickly crossing the few feet back to them.  She knelt at Steve’s side where he was crumpled on the floor, lifting his chin to get access to his neck.  “He’s fading fast,” she murmured unhappily, taking stock of Rogers’ vitals.  “He’s going to die unless we can get out of here.”

“He’s not going to be the only one,” Clint remarked darkly, his eyes narrowing at the sound of boots some ways down the darkened corridor.  The floor lights illuminated the path they’d come, washing pale illumination across the tiles and chasing away the shadows.  There wasn’t any way to hide their tracks, not with Steve leaving a pretty obvious trail of blood.  If someone rounded the corner at the other end of the hallway, they would be spotted.

But the lights went out, and everything was plunged into darkness.  Clint’s breath locked in his throat, both of his hands clenched around his gun as he darted his gaze about.  It was pitch black and completely silent aside from his pounding heart and breathing, Carter’s soft, calm pace and Steve’s shuddering one.  Hill must have finally cut the power to the detention level.  It didn’t last long, only a minute maybe, but hopefully it had been enough to force the computer systems to reboot.  The lights surged back on.  “Try it now,” Clint quietly ordered, staying close to Steve as Carter went back to the elevator.

“Got it.”  Clint didn’t waste time with gratitude, sliding his arm under Steve’s shoulders again and hauling him up as gently as he could considering he had to throw all of his strength behind it.  Carter was beside him in an instant, trading worried looks to the dark end of the corridor from where they’d come and the open elevator like she feared the doors would close if they didn’t move fast enough.  Apparently that was a valid concern, as they slid shut while they were trying to maneuver Rogers inside.  Clint’s leg got caught, and he cursed roughly, kicking and struggling to get himself free.  Steve’s weight nearly toppled Carter into the corner of the lift, which was considerably wider than most elevators to accommodate freight.  She stayed upright, watching with unsettled eyes as Clint righted himself.  He joined her in the corner.

Nothing happened.  A few seconds escaped them.  Then a few more.  _Nothing_ happened.  “Goddamn it,” Clint whispered, staring at the sealed doors and praying that they hadn’t just blindly and stupidly walked into some sort of trap.  He glanced around the elevator car, but there were no controls and no obvious escape routes.  It was a damn freight elevator meant to carry _freight,_ not people, so why the hell would there be?

“Now what?” Carter asked softly.

Clint was struggling to hold onto his composure.  It had been wearing and wearing and _wearing_ with all of the evil shit he’d been forced to do that day.  He was out of strength, out of determination, out of courage, and out of patience.  They were trapped in a nest of the enemy with a man brutalized probably beyond the point the saving and it was his goddamn fault, no matter how necessary what he’d done was.  So he couldn’t hide his anger or vitriol, even if it was unfair of him to take it out on her.  “How the fuck should I know?  Your contact in IT, remember?”

Carter was apparently made of sterner stuff than he realized.  He didn’t know her at all, having only met her earlier that day when he’d caught her trying to sneak, cajole, and lie her way in to see Rogers.  He’d been aware that it had been Carter who’d allowed the STRIKE Team to capture Steve, and it had been Carter in the elevator when Steve had nearly escaped.  He’d taken a gamble with her, betraying his own intentions to gain an ally (he had so few, he’d considered the risk worth it).  Hill’s original plan hadn’t included rescuing Rogers.  Hell, Hill’s original plan hadn’t even taken Rogers’ capture into account, so any help he could find (and hopefully trust) was worth it.

But before Carter could respond, the elevator jerked into motion.  Clint pushed himself up against Rogers, steadying him as the lift ascended, breathing a sigh of relief.  He made himself not look at Steve’s body, not see all of the damage because if he did it would become too real.  He was a master spy and assassin.  He’d made tough choices before, sacrificed before.  He’d hurt other people and been hurt himself in the line of duty countless times.  This wasn’t any different.  _This wasn’t any different._

_Focus.  Save him now.  Feel bad later._

“Where does this put us?” he asked.

Carter checked Rogers’ pulse again, like it mattered.  Like there was _anything_ they could do to save him other than getting him out.  “I’m not sure.  Near the loading bay.”

“You’re not sure,” Clint repeated irately.

“Director Hill is supposed to meet us,” Carter returned, centering herself and looking up at the doors as though there was some sort of indication of where they were or what floor they were on.  There wasn’t.

“She talked with you?”  As ridiculous as it was, he felt betrayed.

“Yes,” Carter snapped, “when you were gone.”

A sharp retort tickled the tip of Clint’s tongue, but he bit it back.  This whole situation was fucked up beyond all repair.  He was, too.  He gathered the ragged ends of his composure and yanked them back together.  It didn’t matter that there was an army of HYDRA between them and freedom.  They had to do this.

The elevator stopped moving.  However, the doors didn’t open.  Clint aimed his gun at them, pushing Steve and Carter behind him.  Carter had her weapon drawn as well.  “Not again,” she moaned disdainfully.  Clint made sure she had a solid grasp of Steve before stepping across the elevator to the doors.  He swept his hand over the shining steel, looking for something, _anything_ , to get them open.  He dug his fingers in the seal, but there was no way he could force them apart.  He frantically glanced at Rogers, praying (in vain) that he was aware enough and strong enough to be of some assistance.  Steve was shivering and slumping and sliding down the wall.

“Shit,” Clint whispered.  Carter knelt at Steve’s side, but before Clint could even turn to them, the doors rolled open.  He brought his weapon up, swallowing his surprise, and found himself staring down the barrel of Maria Hill’s gun.  They stood still, both too alarmed and threatened to lower their weapons for what seemed like a long time.  But then Steve gave a shuddering, desperate cry, curling in on himself on the floor and bleeding, and Hill holstered her gun.

“Jesus,” she whispered, her blue eyes wide with horror.  She was far too hardened and professional to lose her cool, however, even as she crouched at Carter’s side and got a good look at the damage that had been done to Rogers.  She hesitated only a moment, watching as Carter tried to comfort the suffering man, and turned to Clint.  “We have to move.  Now.”  She turned to Clint.  “You got them?”

“Yeah.”  The targeting blades he’d taken from one of the Insight carriers were safely tucked deep inside his vest.

“Good.  We need to move.  My hack wasn’t very clean.  Everything’s rebooting, and when it does…”

Clint didn’t need more of an explanation.  He returned his gun to his holster and crouched at Rogers’ crumpled form as well.  “Come on, Cap,” he beckoned, although he didn’t think Steve could hear him as lost in agony and shock as he was.  He grabbed Steve’s right arm, trying to be careful but still wresting a weak cry of protest from the captain’s battered lips.  His eyes drifted down, catching the blood-soaked mess of Steve’s left knee, and he made himself look away.  “Come on!”

Between the three of them, they got Steve back onto his feet.  Underneath the blood and the bruising, he was as white as a ghost.  His eyes were mostly closed.  He was barely breathing at all, and his skin was ice cold.  Clint had seen enough bad gunshot wounds (and been shot bad enough himself) to know the signs of hypovolemic shock.  Carter was right; unless they got him out of there and found some medical help in a hurry, Steve wasn’t going to make it.  _Not an option._   His conscience wouldn’t even let him entertain the possibility.

The elevator had indeed deposited them near the loading bay, which meant (thank God) they were near an exit.  They staggered through the quiet area, Clint wondering idly where Hill had stashed the bodies of whatever guards had been on duty.  Clearly she’d broken into one of the server rooms, as there was no other way to get access to the computer systems for the detention block.  It would only be a matter of time before their escape was noticed.  The Triskelion’s security measures were too powerful, its slew of security personnel notwithstanding.  And he was pretty sure he’d killed Rollins, but Rumlow had still been breathing when they’d left the prison cell where they’d tortured Steve.  When he woke up, he’d bring the wrath of all of HYDRA down on them.  Goddamn vindictive bastard.  Clint had suspected Rumlow’s true nature for months, even before the incident in Crimea, but what he’d seen this last day…  It had been all too easy to pretend to be HYDRA.  All he’d needed to do was revel in causing pain.

And sell himself in the process.

 _God, this better be worth the price we’ve all paid._   Those targeting blades felt infinitely heavy on his person, paid for with Steve’s blood and Clint’s soul and Natasha’s trust.  He made himself stop thinking and pay attention to the problems at hand, which were serious and numerous.  They stopped alongside the garage door, which, of course, was closed.  Hill slammed her hand to the control panel, but it chirped in denial.  Her placid face tightened ever so slightly in dismay.  “Damn it,” she whispered, trying again.  The computer system adamantly refused again.  Why became obvious a breath later.

Alarms began to blare, and everything was washed in red.  The thunder of soldiers approaching filled the vacuous loading bay, and their small group took refuge behind crates and equipment.  On the other side of one of the larger stacks of boxes, Carter dropped to her knees, and they settled Steve into her arms.  “You got him?” Clint asked her softly, and she nodded, pulling the shield from her back with one hand and tightening her grip on her gun with another.  Clint drew his bow from where it was folded up along the quiver on his back and ducked next to Hill, hoping the shadows would hide them for at least a few minutes while they figured out what the hell to do.  It sounded like a whole goddamn army was going to be bearing down on them.  “What’s the plan?”

“I’ll let you know when I figure it out,” Hill tersely responded.

“This was the way out?”

She nodded, her jaw clenched.  Clint gritted his teeth.  They were pinned in here; there was simply no way they could fight their way through all of SHIELD to get to another exit.  They would need to make a stand, no matter how futile.  He kept low, pulling an arrow from his quiver and fitting it to his bow.  He peeked over the top of the crates and saw dozens of soldiers flooding into the bay at the other side of it.  He reached into his vest and pulled the targeting blades free.  There were three of them, all he’d been able to steal in the few short minutes he’d had earlier that day after the STRIKE Team had returned from New Jersey.  It had taken most of the morning to weasel his way into the confidence of the STRIKE Team and more than that for Pierce to allow him to get close enough to pilfer the access codes for one of the Insight carriers.  Finding an excuse to slip away to the Insight Bay hadn’t been easy in the wake of their failed attempt to reclaim the USB drive from Natasha.  Pierce had been livid with their ineptitude and furious that Rogers had somehow compromised the Winter Soldier.  But Clint had managed, moving fast and without notice, levying all of his considerable expertise in espionage to get the job done.  The damn things were only the size of his palm, flimsy, translucent green squares that seemed hardly worth all this suffering.  “Here.”  He handed them to Hill.  “Take Carter with you and run.  I’ll stay behind and hold them off you as long as I can.  Hopefully they’ll think this is just a rescue attempt.”  _A bad one._

Someone else would have argued.  Hill didn’t.  She was far too much of a pragmatist to waste time on sentiment.  She pocketed the blades and snuck over to Carter, who was watching their exchange with dark eyes and anger tightened her face.  She was searching Clint’s expression, and he knew why.  She wanted some assurance that Rogers would make it out of this okay.  There wasn’t any to be had.  Still, she didn’t argue either, sliding out from under Steve and scrambling to Hill’s side with Steve’s shield clenched in her hand.

“Agent Barton!” someone hollered.  Clint heard boots slowing to a stop on concrete and rifles being readied.  “You got nowhere to go!  Surrender!”

He stood, pulling back on the string of his bow and unleashing his arrow.  It struck the leader of the company of soldiers right in the chest, and with a tap of his fingers to his bow, the arrow detonated.  The explosion was loud, echoing in the loading bay, and the men fell back in surprise.  Clint was more than ready to take advantage, moving like lightning as he drew another arrow, fitted it, and loosed it.  This one exploded as well, taking out another group of men.  “Go!” he hollered to Hill and Carter, hoping this had provided them enough cover to slip to the side and find another way out.

They never got the chance to run.  The massive loading bay door burst into the room in a ball of fire and smoke.  Scorching heat radiated out from the blast, carrying debris with it, and Carter was back instantly, throwing herself over Steve.  Clint ducked, his heart pounding in shock and terror.  When he looked again, he saw a quinjet hovering outside, bathed in the glowing light of the setting sun.  For a moment, he couldn’t make sense of this.  Then the jet’s minigun lowered from its belly, and it let loose bullets in a torrent, sweeping the lines of SHIELD soldiers and cutting them down.  There were screams, the oily stench of things burning as smoke wafted around them.  Clint blinked to clear his vision and watched, dumbstruck, as the quinjet turned and exposed its rear to them.  The ramp descended.  “Come on!” yelled an older man who looked vaguely familiar to him.  He gestured wildly at them, his plain face twisted in barely restrained panic.  “Come on!  Hurry!”

Clint didn’t need to understand.  He tightened his grip on his bow as he crawled over to Rogers’ side.  Carter was already trying to get her arms around him enough to lift, and working together, they pulled the soldier up.  Hill’s gun was firing, a steady banging behind Clint and Carter that was providing cover as they stumbled and staggered toward the rear of the jet.  They carried Rogers inside, tripping over the lip of the ramp, but the man was there to steady them.  Hill emptied her clip and then sprinted after them.  The jet was already pulling away by the time she leapt onto it.

“Hold on!” a voice cried from the cockpit, and Clint tightened his grip on Rogers’ blood-slicked arm to prevent him from sliding as the jet tilted upward at a hell of a steep angle and rapidly ascended.  Hill was a little winded as she fumbled at the rear controls, bringing the ramp up.  The ground disappeared beneath them.

“Doctor Fine,” Hill gasped, helping to pass Rogers’ battered body over the older man.  “Do what you can for him.”  Then she turned flashing eyes ahead to the pilot.  “Sir, I thought I told you stay back!” she angrily said as she moved toward the cockpit.  “We can’t afford to lose you again!”

 _What?_   Clint turned, leaving Rogers in Carter’s and Fine’s hands.  His heart stalled in his chest.  It couldn’t be.  He was wounded and hallucinating or _something_ , because this couldn’t be real.

But it was.  Nick Fury had rescued them.

“You can thank me later!”  The SHIELD Director looked back over his shoulder at them.  His gaze was tense and teeming with disquiet, and he looked downright haggard.  His face was bruised and somewhat gray, but he was _alive_ and _alright_.  A thousand questions flooded over Clint, and everything felt to be spinning (which wasn’t that far from reality).  Fury had been shot three times.  Fury had practically died in his arms.  He’d stood in front of Fury’s corpse at the hospital, for God’s sake!  How was this possible?  _How?_

There was no time to even ask.  A few different alarms went off in the cockpit.  “We’ve got company!” Fury shouted, and the jet suddenly banked hard to the left.  Clint grabbed both Carter and Rogers to steady them.

Fine, who Clint now realized had been among the EMTs who’d tried to treat Fury at the scene when he’d been shot, was crouched beside Steve.  “Jesus,” he whispered.  He had latex gloves on his hands, and he was feeling for Steve’s pulse.  “We’ve got to stabilize him!”

The wail of a warning that Clint well recognized from the many missions he’d flown cut through the rumble of the jet around them.  There was a missile incoming.  “Shit,” Fury hissed.  Hill slid into the co-pilot’s chair none too soon as the jet twisted beneath them again, nearly tossing them all to the other side of the fuselage.

“Easy!  Easy!” Fine shouted to the front.

“Not like I have a choice!” Fury hotly retorted.  He was flicking a few switches on the console, switching from the jet engines to the rotors for more maneuverability.  Clint’s mind was so overthrown that it escaped him for a moment that they were about to engage in some sort of wild aerial dog fight with whatever forces SHIELD had in pursuit.  This was not good.  He watched through the windshield in horror as a pair of Harrier jets screamed over them.  This was _really_ not good.

“There’s a medical kit under the seat over there,” Fine declared, gesturing to the bench that ran the length of the fuselage.  Carter was already scrambling for it, and she returned in a breath, flipping it open.  “Bandages.  Hurry.  We need to get some of this bleeding under control.”  She fumbled to pull a bunch free, shoving some in to Clint’s hands.  The whir of the minigun firing below them was almost deafening, as was the distinctive _clank clank clank_ of bullets peppering the hull right to their left.  Clint forced his hands to be steady as he ripped open the wrappers for a few sterile pads.  He found one of many deep stab wounds on Steve’s flank and pressed the bandage down hard.  The Winter Soldier had fucking _carved_ him.  It was grotesque and disturbing, and even with the couple of hours that had passed and the serum, not much healing had gone on.  The wounds were still seeping and weeping red.

Carter was doing the same, putting pressure on Steve’s shoulder where Rumlow had stabbed him with the stun baton.  The flesh around the injury was burned and bleeding profusely.  Fine had his stethoscope in his ears, and he was listening to Rogers’ heart.  After that, he prodded Rogers’ abdomen, looking increasingly unhappy with what he was finding.  “He has serious internal injuries,” the doctor declared, gravely and calmly like the quinjet wasn’t shuddering all around them and engaged in a life or death fight with SHIELD’s fleet of fighter jets.  He put the stethoscope aside.  “He needs surgery.”

That seemed a rather moot point.  The jet suddenly dipped, and Carter couldn’t hold back her cry as she was flung back into the bulkhead.  Clint threw himself over Steve, holding him steady and protecting him as sparks showered them.  Sharon righted herself and came back to Steve’s side, her hands covered in crimson.  At Clint’s worried look, she shouted, “I’m okay!”

A litany of particularly colorful expletives came from the cockpit.  Clint was immediately forced to cover Steve again when the side of the jet was peppered anew with gunfire.  Alarms were wailing up front.  “We’re not going to make it!” Hill shouted.

The jet seemed to be shaking apart around them.  Fury banked hard again, a dizzying, nauseating jerk of a motion that seemed to nearly rip the jet in half.  The sky was a blur of blue and white and the hard, vicious lines of enemy aircraft.  Clint struggled to breathe, struggled to keep pressure on the bandages he had pressed against Steve’s body, struggled not to be sick and to _think_.

There was a flash of something coming straight at them.  Clint barely had time to focus on it before it streaked past them, trailing smoke.  It was another quinjet.  And behind it came a glint of red and gold.  _Iron Man._

“Stark!” Hill shouted, her normally unendingly stoic voice tremoring in relief.  Clint rose from Steve’s side, stumbling to the front of the jet.  _Oh, please…_   Fury wrenched the flight stick to the right, barely avoiding a barrage of gunfire from one of the Harrier jets.  Maria was frantically yanking on the trigger of the minigun, retaliating as Fury evaded their attackers.  A swath of bullets struck true, punching into one of the quinjets and sending it spinning away.  It didn’t matter.  There were a half a dozen more.  They needed Iron Man.  “Stark, this is Maria Hill!  Do you copy?”

“Hold on!” Fury warned, and Clint barely had time to brace himself against the pilot’s chair as the quinjet dove.  They were low over DC, wildly darting back and forth over trees and homes and screaming northward in an attempt to put some distance between themselves and SHIELD.  They couldn’t.  They’d never outrun the Harrier jets.  _Never._   “Goddamn it!”

“You’re too close to civilian–”

“I know!”  Another alarm screamed, and the jet lurched to the left before Fury could compensate.  One of the engines was failing.

“Stark, please, _please_ copy!  This is Maria Hill!  We need your help!” Now Hill’s tone outright cracked with desperation.  “Stark, damn it!  Answer me!”

“Where the hell have you been?  And I’m kinda busy!” came Tony’s breathless reply over the communications link.

“We need help!  We’ve got five – no, _six_ – enemy aircraft on us!  We can’t break loose!”  There was no answer, just the screeching of the alarms and the pained thrumming of the quinjet’s engines.  In the fuselage behind them, Steve gave a twisted cry, lurching and coughing up blood as Fine and Carter tried to keep him still.  Clint watched in horror.  Bullets slammed into the top of the jet and things shuddered and something near the rear exploded.  Fury swore loudly.  “Stark!  _Stark!_ ”

“I’ve got to get the drive back!” Tony snapped.  Shit.  That was the quinjet the Winter Soldier had taken to retrieve the USB drive.  Of course it was.  And it had just rushed by them, tearing back toward the Triskelion as fast as possible.  _Shit!_ “They can’t have it!  You hear me?  I gotta stop them!”

It was too damn late.  Clint watched out the cockpit windshield as two of the Harrier jets abruptly broke off pursuit.  It was difficult to see what was happening in the chaos, but it looked like they had left to escort the quinjet Tony was pursuing.  A few timely launched missiles forced Iron Man to abandon his chase.  Tony swore furiously, altering his trajectory to shoot vertical and resume his frantic race.  Fury twisted the flight stick, banking hard and pitching upward, trying to stay close to Stark.  The jet nearly stalled, and smoke was filtering into the fuselage.  Their pursuers gathered and fired on them anew.  “Tony,” Clint gasped.  He staggered back to Carter, Fine, and Steve, grabbing oxygen masks as he went in case they lost cabin pressure.  Steve was struggling weakly, somewhat awake and completely delirious and in shock.  Clint grabbed his upper body and held him tight as the jet rocked around them.  “Tony!  We’ve got the Cap, and he’s dying on us!”

That was all it took.  Iron Man cut across the front of the jet, barreling behind them with missiles flying and repulsor cannons blasting.  “Goddamn it,” he hissed in frustration.  Something detonated outside.  The shockwave jostled their damaged jet, and it took Clint a beat to realize it was Iron Man, destroying their pursuers.  “Go.  _Go!_ ”

Fury engaged the quinjet’s powerful engines again, and they rocketed up and away with Iron Man covering their escape.

* * *

They set down on the helipad on the top of Stark Tower.  Before the jet had touched the ground, Carter was lowering the ramp.  Iron Man landed with a heavy thud right beside them, and he was immediately there as the ramp slowly descended.  He stepped up inside impatiently.  “Holy shit,” he whispered at the sight of Steve wrapped in Clint’s arms.  Fine hovered over them, looking increasingly frantic.  “Get out of the way!”  Iron Man stormed over, his boots loud against the deck plating of the jet, and pushed Fine aside.  It was impossible to tell Stark’s expression under Iron Man’s menacing visage, but Clint envisioned fury and disgust and _betrayal_ as those glowing eyes settled on him.  But Tony only ordered, “Let me take him.”  Clint let Steve go, and Iron Man knelt and carefully but quickly slid one arm under the captain’s shoulders and the other under his knees.  Then Tony was up, lifting Steve’s tall frame like it was nothing, and running out of the jet.  Carter followed him.

Clint lingered for a moment, shaking.  _Shaking_.  He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so lost, so unsure of himself.  So awful, muddied and tortured with guilt.  But he wasn’t allowed his weakness.  “Get the kit!” Fine demanded.  “Hurry!”

He compartmentalized.  Tucked it all away and grabbed the medical kid, slamming it shut.  Hill was climbing out of the cockpit, and she stood there, waiting and then steadying Fury as he struggled free of his seat.  He let out a miserable cry, and Clint saw his arm was in a sling and he looked mostly dead, like he was fighting through this by the skin of his teeth.  “Agent Barton!” Fine barked, and his rough tone jolted Clint into motion.  He found his feet and rushed out the back of the jet.  He sprinted across the helipad, taking the steps down from the platform two at a time.  He saw Iron Man pushing through the doors into the Tower, and shadowy forms were there to meet him.  One of them staggered – _Nat_ – and the other figure embraced her tightly.  He resisted the urge to turn and run and instead forced himself after Fine into the building.

The minute he did, the man from before down in the HYDRA’s bunker looked up and locked gazes with him.  “What the hell is _he_ doing here?” he snapped, his glare absolutely frigid as he followed after Tony.  “Get the fuck out!”

“Wilson, no time for that,” Tony retorted.  “What do I do?”

If Fine was bothered by the exchange, he didn’t let it slow him.  “We need a place where I can work.”

“There’s a dining room a floor down.”  Fine nodded, and their group raced down the steps and through a hallway.  They burst inside a spacious, extravagantly decorated room. 

Fine glanced around and settled his gaze on the central table.  It was long but fairly narrow.  “Get him up there.  Carefully.  Carefully!  Barton, bring the kit.”

Tony followed his orders, laying Steve’s limp form on dining table.  Natasha was with him – she’d been there at Steve’s side the whole time – but she didn’t even look Clint’s way.  She ignored him completely, like he wasn’t even there.  She was pale and horrified but doing a damn admirable job of hiding it.  Clint knew she was closing herself down, closing down _hard_ , hiding behind that cool, confident façade of hers.  She didn’t even do more than glance when Fury limped into the room with Hill’s aid, didn’t react at all to the shock of finding him inexplicably alive when she and Clint together had cried over his body.  She was burying herself.  Distancing herself.  Hiding behind Black Widow, behind her strength and power and control.

But Clint saw the tears she was trying to blink away and the tremble of her lower lip and the drying tracks of wetness of her cheeks.  He saw the way her hand drifted to her hip.  Her right hip, where Clint knew she usually had her gun.  Her fingers were steady, ghosting against it, as they reached for Steve’s limp arm and lifted it to settle it over his stomach.  And he saw the rage, the grief, that was there, boiling in her blood beneath the surface, as she took in the undeniable hell that had been done to the man she loved.

Calm and collected (all of it a goddamn _lie_ ), she turned to Fine.  “What do we do?” she softly asked, echoing Stark’s earlier question.

Fine was moving quickly, his bloodied hands examining Steve anew.  He palpated Rogers’ slashed and bruised stomach.  Clint could see how rigid it was.  Steve’s face crumpled in agony, and he groaned lowly, weakly and blindly reaching with a shaking hand.  Natasha caught his fingers in hers and held tight.  “What sort of medical equipment do you have here, Mr. Stark?”

Tony didn’t have the composure to bother with his normal bullshit.  “I, uh…  I don’t know.  JARVIS?”

“Due to Mr. Stark’s unerring ability to injure himself while tinkering, we have a rather extensive collection of items suitable for emergency care,” the AI responded. Clint couldn’t place it, but the computer’s voice sounded off.

“Screw you, J,” Tony snapped and not at all mirthfully.  He took his helmet off and set it to the one of the leather upholstered chairs around the table.  He was staring at Steve’s battered face with a level of concern and fear that Clint didn’t think him possible of showing.

“I should also inform you that Doctor Banner keeps a rather large supply of sedatives in his suite to aid with his condition,” the AI continued. “Given the data I have on the super soldier serum, I doubt they will be potent enough to have much of an effect, but it is worth trying.”

“Ultrasound?” Fine asked.  He was looking at Steve’s left knee now.  Clint couldn’t make himself watch.

“I believe so,” JARVIS answered.

“Sam, go get it and Bruce’s drugs and anything else we have,” Tony ordered.  Sam seemed reluctant to go, his eyes darted among Steve, Tony, and Fine.  “Sam!”

“Right,” Sam gasped, half way between ashamed and angry.  “JARVIS, tell me where–”

“Get in the elevator, Mr. Wilson, and I will take you.”

Carter followed him.  “I’ll help you.  I know what we need.”

“How bad is it, doctor?” Fury asked from where Hill had him situated in a leather lounge chair adjacent to the table.  He was winded, even paler, and clearly in significant pain.

Fine didn’t sugar-coat it.  “It’s bad.  He needs surgery,” he said again.  “He’s got a belly full of blood and his leg’s shot to hell.  Some of these wounds are deep enough to be dangerous.”  Fine shook his head.  “The serum’s keeping him alive, but his chances would be significantly better if we could get some blood into him without dumping it all into his abdomen.”

“What are you saying?” Tony asked.  “You wanna do this here?”

Fine tipped his head ruefully, like suggesting that they perform invasive, life-saving surgery on Captain America in the middle of one of Tony Stark’s dining rooms was common place.  He started digging in the kit Clint had brought, looking for supplies.  He unceremoniously dumped the contents on the table above Steve’s head when he couldn’t find what he wanted.  He pulled out tubing and a needle.  “Agent Hill, back in the jet there’s a cooler.  We need it here.”  Hill, as well, was hesitant to go, but she did after a beat.

“What the hell is the matter with a hospital?” Tony demanded.

Fury was tight with worry and anger.  “Which one do you trust?  Where can we take him where HYDRA won’t find us?”

“We can’t–”

“We can.  Fine saved my life in a goddamn cave under the Potomac yesterday,” Fury returned.  He was breathless with the strain of staying awake and upright.  Clint had never seen him so vulnerable.  His wayward glance revealed other things he hadn’t noticed until now.  Thick bandages under the black t-shirt.  The tremor of his body.  Sweat glistening on his face.  Hill was right to be concerned.

“We need to get the bleeding under control, patch him up enough for the serum to take him the rest of the way.  If we don’t, he could die.”  Fine had his stethoscope pressed to Steve’s chest again, listening and counting and thinking.  “He’s luckier than most soldiers going through field surgery.  At least infection shouldn’t be a concern.”

“What about the pain?” Clint heard himself ask.  He, like everyone else, knew the super soldier serum prevented most forms of anesthesia and analgesia.  When they’d brought Rogers back after Crimea, he’d been so close to death that he’d thankfully been unconscious for the emergency procedures that had saved his life.  He wasn’t now, at least not entirely.

“That’s why we need to do this fast,” Fine answered.

Tony looked aghast.  “God,” he moaned.  “J, can you give us a read out of Rogers’ vitals?  Get it on the monitor over there.”

“The biometric scanners are not functioning optimally because of the attack, but I will try.”

“Easy, Captain,” Fine soothed.  He was searching for a vein in Rogers’ arm, searching and not finding given Steve’s poor blood volume.  Steve moaned hoarsely, struggling with a shadow of his normal strength.  They were forced to wait for what felt like an excruciating eternity, watching as Fine finally located a decent vein and got the IV inserted.  Then Sam and Carter came back, her arms loaded with sheets and bandages and antibiotic creams and his with the portable ultrasound scanner and an oxygen tank.  Clint went to help him, struggling to check-out from reality just a little to put the fuzzy comfort of some distance between himself and what was happening.  Wilson seemed as lost as he was, and he didn’t even bother with a harsh look as Clint grabbed some of the stuff from him.  “Get the O2 over here.  Let’s get him on it.”

Hill returned while they did that, bearing the cooler Fine had requested.  Inside it there was saline.  And blood.  Bags and bags of it.  Obviously Fine and Fury had been prepared to do this.  Clint wished with a touch of anger that Hill had been more forthcoming, that she had told him Fury was alive and capable of helping them.  But she’d compartmentalized that, too.  Maybe it had been for the best.  If either Clint or Sharon had been captured during their mission…

Rogers cried out, arching his back.  “I’m going to need him to be still,” Fine curtly declared.  He was stringing a bag of blood and one of saline to the IV.  “Agent Hill, come hold this.  Give me the scanner.  Where’s this sedative?”  Sam handed the small case to Fine.  He fished a couple of syringes out, and after inspecting one for a second he injected Steve in the arm.  “Pray this does something.”

If it did, it wasn’t obvious.  Steve’s eyelids fluttered, his breath a fast-paced, faint vapor against the oxygen mask Natasha and Sharon were trying to situate over his face.  Natasha was staring at him, staring like she was _willing_ him to be okay.  Fine was getting supplies ready with Carter’s help, bandages and the sheets and surgical thread and needles and ( _God_ ) scalpels.  He took the ultrasound scanner and fired it up, moving the probe across Rogers’ damaged belly.  The number of cuts and lacerations and flat-out stab wounds was horrifying.  Clint stopped counting them.  Fine worked in silence, glancing between the tablet connected to the portable scanner that Carter was holding for him and the readout of Steve’s vitals that was haltingly appearing on the TV monitor in the lounge area.  Frustrated and obviously worried, he set the equipment aside and reached for a scalpel.  “Damn it.  He’s deep into shock.  Severely tachycardic.  BP’s in the tank.”

“What the hell does that mean?” Wilson demanded.

“It means we need to do this right now,” Fine answered, rushing to get ready.  Carter handed him bandages and surgical tools.  The uncapped scalpel glinted wickedly in the light.  “Can you assist me?”

Sharon was white-faced at his request; this probably went beyond anything she’d ever done before.  But she nodded, reaching for a pair of gloves.  “Yeah, I can.”

“Good.”  To the rest of them, Fine said, “I need Captain Rogers to be still.”  He wasn’t any more explicit than that.  Clint’s beleaguered mind struggled to understand _what_ he meant, exactly, but then he did.

_Oh, God._

Fine cut.  Steve squirmed.  As hurt as he was, he was still so strong, the heel of his right foot slamming into the table with enough force to crack it and shake it.  “I mean it!  I need him still!”  Tony moved.  Sam moved.  They pushed their way in, hands grabbing and weight pressing down.  They both looked sick, horrified, their eyes averted as Fine started working on their friend.  Clint couldn’t make himself come closer.  Not after standing by and watching the STRIKE Team beat their captive.  Not after doing nothing as those bastards had tortured him.  He’d sunk into the lies he’d donned for his mission, enveloping himself in detachment because _there’d been no choice_ , and now he just couldn’t do it again.

“Easy, Captain,” Fine soothed again.  “Easy.  Sharon, get some pressure in there.  See it?”

Steve screamed.  It was a hoarse sound, as horrible and gut-wrenching as it had been when Rumlow had been shocking him in front of the camera.  Natasha looked helpless, the pain in her eyes deep and devastating.  Steve bucked up.  Stark had the strength of the suit behind him, but he was taken by surprise and was nearly flung off.  He gritted his teeth, holding Rogers down by the shoulders.  One was so badly dislocated that Tony let go of it like it burned him when Steve cried out again.  “No,” Rogers begged, tossing his head with a sob of a breath.  “No!  Don’t!  Please!”

“Steve, it’s alright.  You’re safe,” Natasha said.  Her soft voice belied her words.  Clint could hear every crack in her heart with the way it shook and teetered.  “Calm down.  You’re safe.”

Steve wailed, back arching anew, fingers pressing hard into Iron Man’s arms.  “No!” he cried.  _“Bucky!”_   His voice failed him.

“Keep him steady!” Fine snapped.  “You want to make this worse?”

“Barton!” Stark snapped.  “For Christ’s sake, _help!_ ”

Tony’s harsh order snapped Clint from his stasis, and he charged to the side of the table.  He pressed up against the smooth, hard plates of Iron Man, reaching for Steve’s right hip and pushing down with all of his strength.  Natasha was moving, too, climbing up.  She took Steve’s head in her lap, shushing him quietly, grabbing one of his hands where it was blindly reaching toward the bloody mess of his stomach.   She curled over him, pressing her lips to his forehead.  “You’re safe,” she swore.  Steve was shaking, panting, half gone but awake enough to know he was in terrible pain.  And she was trying to stand in between him and all of his suffering.  She smiled despite the wetness of her eyes.  “You’re with me, Steve.  I’m here.  Just stay still.  It’ll be over soon.”

Tears streamed from Rogers’ eyes.  “Nat?” he whispered.

It felt wrong to watch.  Clint had never seen Natasha like this before.  When she’d shot Steve in Russia, she’d been low, crushed, lost up in herself and her past _._   Now she was calm but fiery with purpose, driven in a way he’d never anticipated.  She shifted the oxygen mask aside and kissed Steve hard.  He jerked and cried into her mouth, but she held him tighter, tender but forceful enough to ground him.  Somehow over the roar of his own heart and Steve’s anguished cries and the murmuring of Fine and the gasping of the others, Natasha’s soft voice was incredibly loud.  It felt wrong to listen.  It all felt _wrong_.  “Just stay still,” she whispered against Steve’s torn lips.  “I’ve got you.  I’m here.”

“Hold on, Cap,” Stark said.  “Hold on.”  Steve choked, whimpering and groaning and struggling.  Tony floundered to keep him immobile.  “We’re gonna get you through this.”

Sam was nearly kneed in the chin, but he didn’t let go.  “Easy, pal.  We got you.”

Steve’s shivering was downright violent, but this time it was with a purpose.  Clint could feel the cords of tendons and muscles clenching and contorting in a brutal struggle to stay still under his arms.  He closed his eyes and held Rogers down, pushing it all away.  Everything.  The lies he’d told.  The horrors he’d made possible.  In his mind’s eye he was back there, back in the lobby of the Triskelion and watching through the sight of his sniper rifle as Rogers staggered to his feet and ran.  _“Take the shot, Barton!”_   The voice was gruff and demanding in his ear.  He _had_ to do it.  If he didn’t, they would know he was lying, that he wasn’t loyal to HYDRA, and everything would be lost.  _“Kill him!  Take the goddamn shot!”_

He felt the trigger beneath his index finger.  He took the shot.

_I’m so sorry._

Steve screamed, tearing him from the memory.  Natasha hushed him.  “I’m here,” she murmured, her lips to his.  “I’m here.  Just breathe.”  Clint looked away.  He felt Steve’s muscles again, so taut with strength and pain, bulging under his hands.  Suffering with restraint.  Wracking with agony and anguish.  Torture, again.  Torture, and he was still the monster holding him down.  He closed his eyes.

“It’s alright, Steve.  I’m with you.  I’ve got you.  I’m here.  _I’m here._ ”

* * *

It took hours for Fine to patch Steve up.  Thankfully, he passed out early on in the process and stayed mostly unconscious for the duration of it.  Clint couldn’t be sure if it was from Banner’s sedative or from the pain, but it didn’t matter.  He was infinitely glad Rogers found some reprieve.  Fine located two significant internal tears, one in Steve’s liver and another in his right kidney, and together he and Carter were able to repair them.  They were others, but Fine quickly decided it would be better to allow the serum a chance to work rather than perform a more invasive operation.  After closing up Rogers’ abdomen, the doctor had turned his attention to Steve’s left knee, trying to realign the shattered bones.  That had been slower going, but Rogers had thankfully remained unconscious for the worst of it which made it infinitely easier.  They’d fixed the joint as best they could, braced it, and wrapped it securely.  Steve had started coming around again while Fine had set to stitching the innumerable gashes and stab wounds littering his chest, back, abdomen, and thighs.  Sam and Sharon had helped the doctor, handing him supplies and bandages and shifting Steve’s body as he directed them.  Finally they reduced his damaged shoulder.  That had been difficult and traumatic, and Steve struggled even with Tony holding him steady when they forced his arm back into the joint.  Natasha remained strictly at his side even as he nearly crushed her hand.  She stroked his hair and whispered quiet words.  She held him tighter when the pain ratcheted up and soothed him as he tumbled down the other side of the agony.  She was infallible, even as exhausted as she was.  She never let him go.

When Fine was finished with the last of the sutures, they bandaged Rogers up until he was a veritable mummy.  He was nearly covered in gauze, and the spots where his skin was visible were rapidly turning dark black and blue.  But he was stable enough and sleeping again.  “It’s the best we can do,” Fine said.  Wilson had found something to pass for an IV pole, and a huge bag of saline and multiple bags of blood were draining into Steve.  The doctor looked them over for a moment before deciding it was alright.  Then he stripped his bloodied gloves off and sat in one of the lounge chairs, sagging into the leather.  He was exhausted and doing nothing to hide it.  “Let the serum do its work.  He’ll be in for a rough time when he wakes up, but I think he’ll be okay.”

Tony had been disturbingly quiet the last few hours, following orders without his customary comments or complaints.  They all had been, silent and grim and searching for strength, for hope that Rogers would be okay.  Hearing Fine proclaim it, even as faint and fatigued as it was, was monumental, and a collective sigh of relief filled the quiet.  “I’m going to get him to a room then,” Tony said.  He carefully lifted Steve with his enhanced strength.  Sam gathered up spare bandages and the cooler of units of blood.  Natasha took the IV pole.  The three of them left to take Steve somewhere he could rest and hopefully recover.

Clint found it difficult to move.  The tang of blood had been thick in the air for hours, and now it was sharp and intolerable.  Red covered the expensive table in wide, viscous smears, dripping languidly to the floor where a significant puddle was forming on the shiny, polished marble.  Aside from that, there was a hell of a mess: a mountain of discarded bandages, gore-covered wrappers that had been dropped, the remains of Rogers’ jeans, discarded tools.  Clint felt nauseous just looking at it and smelling it.  Carter was about as ill, pale and perturbed, but she knelt all the same and started to clean it up.  “Mind helping me?” she asked Clint when he just stood there, blearily watching.  Her voice could have been irate with his lethargy or simply worn from the hellish couple of days they’d endured.  She softened it with compassion.  “Please.”

Clint blinked and snapped to it.

Maybe thirty minutes later, when the mess from their impromptu surgery was mostly gone, Stark came back.  At their questioning glances, he explained, “He’s alright.  Sleeping.  Romanoff and Wilson are with him.”  He sighed, eyeing the haggard remains of SHIELD that had inexplicably found its way into his tower.  He looked ragged himself, bruised and beaten down with true worry for a man he considered his friend.  “Mind explaining to me what the hell happened?”  He glared at Fury, not quite relieved to see him.  “I thought you were dead.”

“I was.”

“Are you a zombie now?  Cool, but gross.  Should I be concerned about you eating my brains?  Mine are probably tastier than most.”  Stark’s half-hearted attempt at levity fell flat.  Fury sighed, eyeing the inventor with annoyance in his gaze.  “What?  You know you look like death warmed over.”

“Damn convenient considering I don’t feel much better.  Lacerated spinal column, cracked sternum…”  Fury shifted uncomfortably.  Battered and beaten didn’t begin to describe him. “Shattered collar bone, perforated liver…  One hell of a headache.”

Fine looked up from where he was hunched over in his chair and rubbing his forehead.  “Don’t forget your collapsed lung.”

Fury sighed again, wincing and shaking his head.  “Right.”

Carter narrowed her gaze.  “But, sir, how–”

“Dendritotoxin B,” Fury wearily answered.  “Doctor Fine managed to get some in me after the Winter Soldier gunned me down on the street.  Does a mighty effective job at making you look dead.  Slows the pulse to one beat a minute.  Banner developed it for stress.  It didn’t work so great for him, but–”

“Yeah, I know what it is.  I wasn’t aware he was in contact with you.”  Stark didn’t make any attempt to hide his suspicious tone or his anger.

Fury regained himself enough to return the glare.  “You’re not the only one who consulted for SHIELD.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” sniped Tony.  “Does that mean HYDRA has its hands on more proprietary information?  I didn’t agree for my engine designs to be outfitted for weapons of mass destruction!  This is–”

“Stark, you have no idea how important it is that you help us now,” Hill said.  She was reaching into her pockets.  “We took these from the Insight carriers–”

“Who the hell is this Winter Soldier fucker?” Tony demanded.  “Where did he come from?”  Fury shared a quick glance with Hill.  “If you want my help, you better start talking.”

Clint didn’t want to hear it.  He was stalking away, out of the dining room and into the corridor beyond.  His boots thudded heavily and angrily as he went to the elevator.  The doors opened, and he stepped inside.  “Where are they?” he asked.

Stark’s AI was hesitant, probably with good reason, but all it served to do was heighten Clint’s anger.  “Agent, I do not believe your presence would be–”

_“Where is she?”_

It was silent for a second as though JARVIS was considering his options.  But the elevator began to move, and it stopped a few floors down.  The doors opened.  Clint headed out.  It wasn’t hard at all to figure out where Stark had taken Rogers.  The trail of blood droplets on the floor was conspicuous to say the least.  He followed it along the wide, expensively furnished hallway until he ran into Wilson.  The other man was stepping out of a room, and when he looked up and met Clint’s gaze, his face hardened into a threatening scowl.  “You’ve got a hell of a lot of nerve coming down here,” Wilson said lowly.  “I don’t know who you are or what you did, but she doesn’t want to see you.”

“What do you know about it?” Clint retorted tightly.  “Nothing.”

“Man, fuck you.”

Clint was worn so thin that he could barely hold onto his restraint.  The urge to pin Wilson against the wall was nearly overwhelming, but he only clenched his fists and stood still.  “I did what I had to,” he seethed.  “I always do.”

Wilson said nothing to that, but his scowl remained hard and his eyes never looked away.  Clint pushed past him and grabbed the doorknob.  He didn’t need to defend himself to this man, this stranger, who was nothing more than a tourist brought into something he couldn’t possibly understand.  He didn’t need to justify what he’d done.  Not to Wilson.  Not to Hill or Stark or Fury.  Not to anyone.

Not to anyone except her.

The room was dark.  The sun was long set, so the shadows of nightfall were heavy upon everything.  Still, Clint could see how spacious it was, how nicely decorated, with a huge living room illuminated by the city beyond the tall windows to the left.  He stepped past the seating area, where supplies and extra bedding were haphazardly tossed onto the chairs, and to the bedroom.  There was a light on (in the bathroom maybe?), casting a golden glow across the huge, king-sized bed.  He could see Rogers, deeply asleep, partially covered by the sheets and quilts.  The other half of the bed was completely draped in blackness.  He knew she was there.  Black Widow, watching from the shadows and protecting her mate.  “Get out of here,” came a low hiss.

“Nat–”

“Get out!” she snapped.  He saw her move, a faint outline of lighter gray amidst the layers of blackness.  And he saw the gun, loose in her hand.  “Get away!”

Clint could have died.  He wanted to.  There was a black hole in his chest where his heart was collapsing, sucking _everything_ into it.  “Let me explain,” he said.  “Please.  Give me a chance to explain.”

“What could you say?”  She slid from the shadows.  The strong, determined woman from before, the woman who felt _nothing_ and lent her power and courage to the man she loved…  That woman was gone, and in her place was what was left.  Pain.  Fear.  Anger.  All the poise and control had been blasted away, and she was wild with her anguish.  Tears glistened wetly on her face, and she was shaking.  “What could you possibly have to say?”

“Let me try,” Clint implored.  “After all I’ve done for you…  After all we’ve done for each other, you owe me that.”

The gun glinted in the light, shifting, and she was shattering.  He could see it as plain as day.  However, she didn’t raise it or point it at him.  She didn’t move at all, aside from the fine tremors wracking her form.  And she didn’t say no.  He drew a deep breath and tried to be calm.  “After Fury was kill – well, after we thought he was killed and Pierce started his manhunt for Rogers, Hill contacted me.  She told me she needed my help, that she needed someone on the inside of Pierce’s operation.  She told me that if Project: Insight launched, a lot of innocent people would be killed.  Millions, maybe.  I didn’t believe her at first.  Fury told me not to trust anyone, so I didn’t, not even Hill.  Not without proof.  But Pierce was already trying to get his claws on me, so I went with it, figuring I could find out who had Fury shot if nothing else.  Then Pierce showed me Project: Insight.”  He grunted softly and looked down.  “Talk about goddamn proof.”

“Don’t,” she growled.  “Don’t try to justify it.”

“We needed to get the targeting blades out of the Triskelion,” Clint went on, ignoring her.  She needed to hear this.  She needed to see past her love for Rogers and find some objectivity.  “They interface with the satellites, and with the satellites those helicarriers could wipe people off the map.  We needed to get them here, give Stark a chance to examine them and maybe reverse engineer them or come up with _something_ to stop Project: Insight.  Hill needed someone on the inside, so I did it, Nat.  I faked loyalty to Pierce to get close enough to him to get the access codes to the helicarriers so I could steal the blades.  I had to.  I didn’t know what was on the drive.  I didn’t know what the Cap gave you, what he was protecting, and maybe if I did this would’ve gone differently, but at the time there was no choice and this was the only option.”

“Don’t try to justify it!”

“ _Listen_ to yourself!  You gave Pierce back the algorithm!  You traded the lives of millions of people for Rogers!  I know you love him, but you can’t–”

“What did you do to him?”  Her eyes flashed, wild and wet and furious.

Clint didn’t know what hurt more, his anger or his grief.  They were both damning.  “I had to do it,” he repeated, like saying it enough could make her believe it.

“Did you hit him?  Huh?”  Her voice broke.  She came more into the light, betraying how badly tormented she was.  How vulnerable and exposed and compromised.  The façade she always wore was broken in a way Clint never thought possible.  “Did you do what they did?  Did you tie him up?  Did you laugh with them?  Did you torture him?”  He swallowed the bile from the back of his throat.   _“What did you do?”_

“I shot him.”  The admission was harsh.  Once the words spilled from his mouth, he couldn’t hold anything back, like the goddamn floodgates were open and everything he’d ever been taught about this life was turning to mud in his hands.  “He was trying to run, to get back to you, and I shot him.  I had to.  They would have seen through everything I’d done if I hadn’t.  The STRIKE Team was right there, ordering me to kill him, so I put a bullet through his leg and dropped him.”

Something flashed in Natasha’s eyes.  Fury.  Madness.  _Insanity._   He’d seen it before, when the STRIKE Team had brought her back from Russia.  When Brushov’s serum had been pulsing through her veins.  But this was only a blink and nothing more.  She completely wilted in front of him like her rage wasn’t enough to sustain her, choking on a sob that spoke more of her pain than any words ever could.  Clint grabbed her, pulling her closer even as she struggled.  She beat her fists against his combat vest, twisting the coarse fabric, quivering so violently that she nearly shook them both.  Clint wrapped his arms around her, wincing at the ragged cry that punched into his shoulder.  “Jesus, Nat,” he whispered.  “It killed me.  I swear to God, it did.  You don’t know how much.”

“Don’t,” she cried.

“I love you.”

“Don’t you fucking say that,” she snarled between weeping breaths.

“I have to.  I have to tell you.  I love you.  Not like he does.  I know that.  But I still do, and you love me, too, and you know it.  I’m not saying this to hurt you, or to take you away from him.  Believe me, I’m not.  And I let it go, Nat.  I know he’s what you want.  I let you go, and for a while I could convince myself that it didn’t hurt, but so help me, it _did_.  And it _killed_ me to do this you.”

“You didn’t do anything to me,” she declared lowly.  “You did it to _him_.”

Clint tightened his hold on Natasha but turned his gaze to Rogers where he was slumbering soundly through their argument.  It was wrong to hold her like this.  _Everything_ _was wrong._   “As crazy as this sounds,” he said into her hair, closing his eyes against the burn of his own tears, “I think he’s more likely to forgive me.”

She said nothing to that.  He could feel her muscles tense and relax and tense again, like she was caught in a war between wanting his comfort and hating him for what he’d done.  And hating herself as much if not more.  She finally pushed him away.  “You know what,” she said, wiping at her reddened eyes.  “You’re right.”

“Natasha–”

“Get out,” she snapped, and any semblance of understanding was gone from her eyes.

“You know I did the right thing,” Clint insisted, not willing to be brushed off and cast aside like this.  “This is who we are.  We get the job done!  We make the tough calls, walk that fine line between right and wrong so people can be safe from evil!  We do what soldiers and men like him can’t do!  You _know_ this!”

“You wanna know what I know?” she snapped, whirling and regarding him with those violent eyes again.  “SHIELD isn’t what we thought.  It was _never_ what we thought.  And everything it’s made you and me into…  It’s all a lie, Clint.  This isn’t who I want to be.  Not anymore.”

Maybe it was a lie.  But she was lying to herself if she thought she could just change.  “You’re Black Widow.  We’re SHIELD agents.  And maybe SHIELD wasn’t what we thought it was, but that doesn’t mean we were wrong in doing what we’ve done for the world and for each other.  Who we are…  It isn’t something you can just turn off or ignore.  It isn’t something that goes away because you love Captain America!”

“Isn’t it?”

He could hardly stand to listen to her like this.  “Is it?”

Her hard gaze faltered as if she was realizing he was right.  As if she was trying to convince herself of the truth, that there had been no choice and Clint had done the right thing.  That the sacrifices they’d made had been necessary.  That he had _had to do_ what he did, just as she had done countless times in the past.  They were agents of SHIELD.  And her love for Rogers had blinded her so completely that she had sold the world’s safety to the devil.

She was still shaking.  Clint couldn’t stand strong with their lives crumbling all around them, with her falling apart in front of him.  He set his hands on her shoulders.  The darkness devouring his heart was too hungry, too terrible, and as much as he knew he was right, he couldn’t stand it.  “Nat, I’m so sorry.  Please believe me.”  She didn’t answer.  “I didn’t want to hurt him.  It was so hard to stand there and pretend…  God, help me, Nat.  I didn’t…  Please, I–”

“No.”  She stiffened under his touch.  “If there was ever anything between us, it’s dead now.  Just go.”

Clint stood still, praying that the ice in her brittle voice wasn’t real.  That she wasn’t abandoning him, cutting him off.  He’d brought her with him, walking the path for SHIELD and believing in everything for which it stood, and that road was dissolving under their feet.  They had nothing if they didn’t have each other.  He had nothing if he didn’t have her.  Her support.  Her friendship.  Her faith and belief in him.

Her trust.

But he didn’t have her trust now.  He didn’t have _anything_ now.  She was turning her back on him.  And he couldn’t convince himself that he didn’t deserve it.  The pain was too sharp for him to accept it.  The pain and the guilt.  So much goddamn _guilt_ , poisoning him.  He wanted to hurt her back for hurting him.  “You think we can ever just walk away?  We can’t.  You can’t.  You would have done the same.  Had things gone differently and you’d been in my place, you would have done _exactly_ what I did because it was what had to be done.  I know you would have.  This is _who we are_.  You would have lied and pretended and put on one of your million fucking masks to complete your mission.  You think loving him wipes the red from your ledger?  You think it erases your past?  You think it makes you a better person?”  He shook his head.  “You’re deluding yourself, Nat.”

She flinched but refused to turn, refused to look at him.  She went back to the bed.  She slid across it to Rogers, nestling back into the shadows.  There was his groan and her soft words.  Clint looked away.  Regret cut through him like a cold gust of wind, because he hadn’t been lying.  He did love her, more than he should.  And he cared so much about her that it hurt him to see her like this.  It really did.  Necessary or not, he’d never wanted this.

He was gone before he thought to leave.  And when he was outside, he slammed his fists into the door behind him.  Pain raced up his knuckles and wrists.  He choked on his breath and sank into the wall, suffering with waves of hurt and shame and anger and grief.  _Tortured._   Christ, what the hell had he let himself become?

He had sold his soul for SHIELD.  He didn’t know if he could ever get it back.


	14. Chapter 14

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  **AUTHOR'S NOTE:** Alright, my wonderful readers. This is where things fall apart. It was difficult to write and might be difficult to read. Bear with me. I promise I have a plan.

Two days slipped away.  It was surreal, like something from a disturbing dream where time loses its meaning.  After so much terror and chaos, the passage of these empty minutes, one rolling into another into another, seemed impossible.  They were distant from it all now, safe by the simple fact that they were days removed from the hellish nightmare.  Safe because there were hundreds of miles between them and their enemies, and the sudden, screeching halt of so much fear and adrenaline and desperation left them all reeling.

Natasha existed in a daze.  She barely left Steve’s side.  He was unreachable, so deep in a healing slumber that he seemed nearly comatose.  Fine came in often to check him.  They’d managed to procure a real IV pole and machine, so it was much easier to regulate medicines and fluids now.  The doctor always had a stern look to his face when he looked over Steve’s progress, but he seemed satisfied with what he was seeing.  Natasha helped him.  They sponged off the blood and dirt, days old and seemingly engrained into Steve’s skin, as best they could, but it wasn’t much.  They changed Steve’s many bandages.  The serum’s work was subtle but astonishing.  The shallower slices and lacerations were already barely visible, just hints of red lines and tender flesh scattered across his body.  The more serious wounds had long stopped bleeding, and every time they checked them it seemed Steve’s body had knitted itself back together a little more.  He was calm, peaceful, and apparently not in pain.  With a steady supply of sleep, fluids, and blood, Steve’s body would heal quickly.  The serum was kicking into high gear, undoing the damage from the hypovolemic shock and repairing the countless wounds that had caused it.  Fine remarked that it was the most they could hope for.  Natasha silently begged to differ, as she lay on the bed at Steve’s side, watching his battered chest slowly rise and fall with each even, slow breath.  It was selfish, but she hoped for so much more.  She wanted him back as he had been before this.  She wanted them all back the way they had been.  She had learned years ago to never become attached to life as it was because all too quickly and suddenly life as it was became life as it had been.  But she had.  God, had she ever.

Some of the others came and went, Sam in particular.  They checked in on them, on her, to see if there was anything she needed or anything that they could do to help.  There wasn’t.  She needed Steve awake and whole, and there was nothing they could do to make that happen.  She used to have boundless patience, the sort required to wait for the opportune moment to strike from the shadows or the perfect time to manipulate a mark after teasing, seducing, and positioning him just as she needed him to be.  But she had no patience now.  Not for this.  Fine kept telling her to let Steve sleep, that this was the best thing for him, but it was so damn hard to lay beside him or silently sit with him or hold him without yearning for more.  What he endured at the hands of HYDRA…  _Please, be okay.  Please wake up.  Please.  Please._   It was the only thing in her head.  A chant.  A hope.  A prayer, if she was honest with herself.  _Please come back to me.  Please.  Please keep your promise._

Right away Sam offered to take her place so she could have a break from her vigil, but she always refused, no matter how tired she was.  He knew she was running on empty.  It was obvious, with the bags under her eyes and pallor of her skin and the slump of her stature.  But this was all she could do for Steve now, and she was going to do it.  Eventually he would start to wake up, and when he did, she was going to be with him, right at his side, coaxing him to awareness with the comfort of her hands and her lips and her heart.  She’d failed him before when he’d been hurt.  Back after she’d nearly killed him in Russia, she’d been too much of a coward to stay with him while he’d recovered in the medical bays of the helicarrier and the Triskelion.  In some ways, she was more ashamed of that than she was of hurting him in the first place; at least when she’d shot him, she’d had the excuse of Brushov’s insanity serum twisting her mind.  She’d had no excuse for her behavior afterward, other than fear and selfishness.  She wasn’t about to succumb to either again.

Still, Sam kept offering.  He was stalwart, steadfast, and as the hours bled away, he stayed with Natasha to keep her some company.  They didn’t speak to each other much, nothing beyond the essentials, and Sam spent a portion of the time asleep in the chair beside the bed or out on the couch in the living area.  It was a comfort having him there, if Natasha was honest with herself.  Carter also came to help tend to Steve’s injuries.  Natasha still didn’t entirely trust the other woman, but she was self-aware enough to realize her feelings were rooted more in jealousy and a sense of betrayal than in reality.  And Tony came, too, usually bearing food he’d ordered.  He was working on reverse engineering the targeting blades Clint and Maria had pilfered from the helicarriers, trying to develop some means to hack them or disable them or somehow shut down Project: Insight.  As of yet, nothing had changed in Washington.  Hill apparently still had contacts inside the Triskelion who were feeding her information, and Pierce was pushing Project: Insight through its final testing stages now that he was in possession of the targeting algorithm.  There was no clear indication about when HYDRA might launch its weapon.  That made waiting even more torturous.  Waiting for HYDRA to make its move against the world.  Waiting for Tony to develop some way to stop it.  Waiting for Steve to wake up.  As a group, they could hardly stand it.  The tension around them and between them was taut and awful.

Clint never came to her again.  She hadn’t seen him or talked to him since their fight.  And she was trying her damnedest not to care.  She was trying not to even think about him.

On the evening of the second day, Steve started to stir.  Natasha thought she imagined it at first.  She was sitting in the chair beside Steve’s bed, his hand folded into hers and her fingers stroking slowly and comfortingly over his, when his thumb twitched.  She looked up at his face.  “Steve?”  He didn’t respond, but his hand tightened in hers again.  Natasha rose from her chair, wincing at the twinge of pain in her healing leg, and sat on the bed beside him.  She brushed the hair from his forehead, finding his skin cool and smooth.  No fever, at least.  No infection.  He was getting better. _He’ll wake up._   “Steve?  It’s Natasha.”  He let out a long breath, turning closer to her, but he never opened his eyes.  There was nothing more than that small shift.  Frustrated and afraid, she carefully slid down the side of his body.  She kissed his dry lips and then his bruised knuckles before burying her nose into the nape of his neck.  “Come on.  Come back to me.  Please wake up.  _Please._ ”  Her voice was nothing more than a faint whisper.  The horrors of what had been done to him, even bandaged and healing, were too much for her to see.  The horror of watching Rumlow torture him, of watching Rollins hold him on his knees and Pierce uncaringly orchestrating it all and Clint having his gun on him…  She’d seen horrors.  She’d committed horrors.  But this was unbearable.  She closed her eyes and tried to let go.

A few minutes later, there was a soft rapping at the bedroom door.  Natasha opened her eyes and pulled away from Steve.  Before she could get out of the bed, the door was opening.  Fury tentatively stepped inside the room.  The sunset outside washed him in a dull, golden glow, and it made him seem otherworldly, not quite real.  Like a ghost.  Maybe that wasn’t far from the truth.  The Director’s gaze settled on Steve’s sleeping form, and something akin to regret filled him.  “How is he?”

Natasha set Steve’s hand back down across his stomach and adjusted the blankets to cover him more completely.  “Fine says he’s doing as well as can be expected.”  Her voice sounded dead to her ears.  She hadn’t seen Fury much since their harried arrival at the Tower.  Frankly, she hadn’t wanted to.  She still didn’t want to.  That was incredibly selfish, but she couldn’t help herself.  Fury was a reminder of everything that had been destroyed.  Everything that had been a lie.  She supposed she should have been relieved to see him alive.  But she was numb.  Trapped in that haze.

“Has he regained consciousness at all?”

Natasha tried to read into that question.  It was seemingly simple, but nothing ever was with Fury.  Was he honestly asking because he cared?  Because he was worried?  Or was he asking because Captain America’s old enemies were about to ravage the world with their evil and he needed Steve to stand up and fight them?  “Not yet.”

“How are you?”

Natasha was somewhat taken aback by his concern.  “I’m…”  “Okay” was her automatic response, but she was as far from “okay” as possible.  “…tired.”

Fury nodded slowly.  An uncomfortable moment of silence stretched out between them before he managed to take a few steps deeper into the room.  “I’m sorry, Natasha,” he said.  His tone was as soft and as sincere as Natasha had ever heard it.  She looked from Steve’s peaceful face to Fury’s.  “I really am.”

“What good does that do now?”  The bitterness in her voice was striking, even as quietly spoken as her words were.  “He’s hurt again.”  She faltered, and the anger surged within her.  “He almost gave his life _again_.  And for what?  For HYDRA’s lies?  For yours?  For this better world you thought you were building?  _For what?_ ”

“You need to ask yourself that.”

“What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

Fury normally didn’t stand for that sort of insubordination.  Still, this wasn’t a conversation between a commanding officer and an agent.  The structure, the very foundation, of their relationship had disappeared, and they were both floundering, searching for stable ground.  So his words, while curt, were not as sharp as they could be.  “I think you know.  Deep down inside, where you’re still what you were trained to be, what _I_ trained you to be, _you know_.”  Natasha said nothing, averting her gaze sharply, knowing where this conversation was headed and having absolutely zero interest in going there.  This was about what she’d done.  It was the same thing Clint had thrust into her face, the awful truth of it.  It had been lurking in the back of her mind for the last two days, a vile, vicious thing she couldn’t bear to acknowledge.  “I kept telling Rogers over and over again that he needed to get with the program, that he couldn’t be thinking with his heart all the time instead of his head.  That’s why I partnered you two in the first place, so that you could teach him that it’s not always about doing what’s right.  Sometimes protecting humanity from evil requires evil of us.  Lesser evil, of course, but evil all the same.  I knew that you could show him that.”  Fury looked rueful.  “I never imagined that you would be the one to forget it.  I never imagined you would be the one to fall in love.  You should have known better.”

“No,” she lowly said, battling that swell of emotion inside her again.  She hated it, and she hated Fury, and she hated that some small part of her thought he was right.

Fury shook his head.  “You should have walked away from him.  You two became each other’s liabilities.  And you bartered away the world’s freedom for nothing.”

“It was an impossible situation,” Natasha snapped, like that was some kind of excuse.

“So was Barton’s, and yet you’re condemning him.  He’s low, and you kicked him aside.  I can tell just by looking at him.”

Anger spiked inside her again.  “Don’t bring him into it.”

“Why not?  It’s the same damn thing, only Barton did what he was supposed to do.  He got the mission done, no matter the cost to himself and the cost to Rogers, because failure was not an option.  And thanks to him, we still have a chance at stopping Pierce and HYDRA from using SHIELD to slaughter millions.”

Natasha shook her head.  “If it had come down to it, if he had had to pull that trigger, Clint would never have done it.”

Fury didn’t look at all convinced.  “You sure about that?”

She opened her mouth to declare _whole-heartedly_ that she was, but that was the heat of the argument talking, not the truth.  And the truth was that she wasn’t sure.  Clint _had_ pulled the trigger, in effect.  He’d shot Steve while he’d been trying to escape.  Maybe he had shot him in the leg and spared his life, but he’d still prevented him from getting away.  And that had effectively condemned Steve to the torture he’d endured.  Furthermore, he’d still faced execution anyway; Clint had only postponed it.  Did that make this situation worse?  Or better, because Steve had survived in the end?  And if he _had_ killed Steve, Pierce wouldn’t have had that opportune bargaining chip, that disgusting display, to force her to hand over the drive.  Things would have gone very differently had it not been for Clint’s split-second decision.

And she knew Clint.  In some ways, she knew him far better than she knew Steve.  Clint was complicated with so many dark layers that went deep into his soul.  Despite that, Clint was cool purpose and calm control.  Clint had taught her everything she knew about being an agent of SHIELD, from staying within the mission parameters to the perks of emotional distance to the worth of loyalty to the importance of duty and morality.  He was a pragmatist, level-headed and objective.  Whereas she’d been taught in the Red Room _not_ to feel, to bury her emotions down too deeply to affect her, Clint was a master at reconciling how he felt with what needed to be done.  He could rationalize anything, wielding logic and the mission directives like a weapon to cut through moral ambiguities and emotional ramifications.  Therefore she knew, deep down inside beneath her rage and grief, that Clint honestly believed he’d done the right thing.  And she knew he deserved her understanding and forgiveness.  Still, if she had been in Steve’s place, if she had been the one captured and being humiliated, degraded, and tortured, would Clint still have been able to play the part of a cool and calculating traitor?

She prayed not.  She knew if she had been in Clint’s place, she could have never done that to Steve.  _Never._   Maybe the Black Widow of six months ago could have.  But she could never hurt someone she loved.  And she was certain beyond a doubt that Clint loved her, just like he said he did.  This was not passion or romance.  There was no frantic hunger or deeply set desires between them.  It was a love born from the comfort of understanding, of security and friendship.  It would never lead anywhere.  It would never compromise her love for Steve.  However, no matter how she felt for Steve, she would always feel _something_ for Clint.

She was making herself sick and dizzy with the storm of thoughts in her head.  This was her life.  Their lives.  Gray.  Muddled.  Right and wrong blurred so badly that it was impossible to tell where she, let alone where others, stood.  There weren’t easy answers.  Sometimes there weren’t _any_ answers.  She sighed and closed her eyes against the aggravating burn of tears.  She hadn’t cried since Clint had come to explain himself and apologize.  She was so goddamn tired of her own weaknesses.  Fury noticed, of course.  Fury noticed everything.  “Natasha, you know better than anyone that sometimes the ends have to justify the means.  Sometimes, knowing what we know and doing what we do, that’s _all_ we have.  And sometimes being a hero doesn’t mean throwing yourself down on the wire.  Sometimes it means standing up and getting your hands dirty to get the job done.”

Natasha lost her patience.  “What was I supposed to do?” she hotly demanded.  “Let them hurt him?  Use him like that?  Let them kill him?”  She couldn’t believe what she was hearing.  “That’s not what SHIELD is about.  I left my old life in Russia behind.  I gave myself over to _you_ thinking that I was doing good.  Turns out I was just doing more of the same and not even knowing it.”  She shook her head in disgust.  “Clint was right about one thing.  I was blind.  We all were.”

“You think that doesn’t bother me?” Fury asked irately.

“If it does, then why are you here, telling me this?  You’re right, Nick.  I _know_ exactly what I did, and I would do it again.  I would do it every time, because I believed SHIELD was about saving lives.  That it was about getting our hands dirty to save _every_ life we can.  You wanted me to teach Steve how to ignore his heart.  Well, he taught me how to listen to mine.  You are not going to make me regret what I have with him.”

“I’m not trying to.”

“Then _why_ are you telling me this?”

“Maybe you’re not the only one feeling lost,” Fury returned angrily.  “Maybe you’re not the only one who’s been betrayed.”  That was a hell of an admittance from him.  A blatant declaration of weakness, of vulnerability, that she never imagined hearing from him.  Was she the one who betrayed him?  Pierce?  SHIELD itself?

It tempered her anger, but not enough to let it go.  “How did you not see this happening?”

“There were a lot of things I didn’t see.  And there were a lot of things I didn’t let myself see.  Willful ignorance.”  Fury stared evenly at her.  She couldn’t read his expression; that always made her feel so disarmed, at so much of a disadvantage.  She couldn’t tell if he was angry or upset or disappointed in her.  She suspected all three.  “Damn ironic, I guess,” he finally said after a long moment of tension.  He sighed.  “After you came back from Russia and I heard the rumors that you and Cap had a… fling, I told myself that if it was true, I should put a stop to it.  I knew it would compromise you, and in our world, I can’t afford to have you compromised.”

“You don’t own me,” Natasha said lowly, threateningly, beyond disturbed with the idea that Fury would have ordered her and Steve to not be together.  That SHIELD would have attempted to control them like that.  Perhaps SHIELD and HYDRA weren’t as separable as she’d hoped.  “You couldn’t have stopped us.”

“Why do you think I didn’t try?” Fury returned.  “Why do you think I turned a blind eye?  You were…  You were happy.  When you came back to work after Rogers went home, I could see you were different.  It was the first time in all the years I’ve known you that I thought you were at peace with yourself.  You knew who you were.”

“I was, and I did,” she hissed, her eyes stinging again, “until this hell burned it all away.”

“I’ve never wanted to see any of you hurt, least of all you.  I care about you, Natasha.  I care about _all_ of you,” Fury insisted.  There was sincerity in his voice again, but he’d mustered more before for lesser causes than manipulating her.  Natasha wanted to believe him.  Maybe she would have before all of this, before Crimea.  Now…  “But I should’ve realized then and there that you weren’t fit for this anymore.  You should have realized that, too.  There’s no room for love in our lives.  You know that.  This is what loves does.  It creates impossible situations.  It blinds you, twists your perceptions of things, makes you trust when you shouldn’t until there’s no way out.”  He shook his head sadly.  “And now the love between the world’s best soldier and the world’s best spy is going to end us all.”

She flinched and looked away.  Her heart was screaming that she argue, that she deny that, but she couldn’t.  She couldn’t because she was afraid he was right.  No matter her reasons, no matter if she’d saved Steve’s life, she’d made an impulsive error.  A tremendous mistake.  She’d been weak.  And HYDRA had exploited her, just as she’d feared someone would if she ever fell in love.  It had been a trap, and she’d walked right into it.

Fury nodded blankly, staring at Steve’s sleeping body.  “I’m tired, too,” he commented unhappily.  “I’m tired of seeing you hurt.  I’m tired of seeing him hurt.  He’s the best of us, probably the best asset SHIELD has ever had.  Unfortunately, the best men are the ones who make the best targets and the best victims.”  Natasha winced.  That was another thing she’d made herself forget.  That Steve didn’t belong in their dark lives full of lies and murder and manipulation.  That he could be safe in her world.  It was another fantasy into which she’d whole-heartedly thrown herself.  Subconsciously, she reached for Steve’s hand.  She wove her fingers into his, searching for strength.  She found it.  Maybe it was just bullshit, stubbornness and more goddamn blindness, but she clung to it.  She didn’t care what Fury thought about what she’d done.  Once his opinions, his concerns and his orders, had been the only ones that mattered.  They didn’t anymore.  No one was going to convince her that she should have let Steve die.  _No one._

Fury’s eye focused after a moment.  “Hill heard from her source in the Triskelion.  Pierce is through doing the final testing on the algorithm.  They’re in the process of uploading it and embedding it into the Insight satellites.  Once they do that, everything will be set.”   He heaved a slow breath.  “We lost this battle, so we pick ourselves up and fight the next one so we can win the war.  That’s what Rogers has taught me.”  He turned slowly, offering Steve and then Natasha one final look.  “Take care of him, Agent Romanoff, and get him back.  Project: Insight launches tomorrow afternoon, and we’re going to need Captain America.”

* * *

Steve continued to sleep, and Natasha continued to drift, aimlessly and without an anchor.  The day drained away into night.  Sam came with a dinner she didn’t eat and worries she didn’t hear.  He left with promises that were empty and useless.  She was determined not to let Fury’s words pierce her resolve.  Determined to stay strong.  Determined not to forgive Clint and see the cold but firm logic in his actions.  There was logic to what she’d done, too.  It hadn’t simply been an emotional response, driven by her bleeding heart rather than her head.  She’d done the right thing.  There had been no other choice.  _An impossible situation.  But love doesn’t create them!_

Who was she kidding?

The last couple of nights she hadn’t been brave enough to sleep in the bed with Steve, afraid that she would jostle him and hurt him.  Now she needed the comfort of it so badly that she didn’t think twice, laying down beside him and holding him close again.  “Please,” she whispered, nuzzling close to the warmth of his neck and breathing deeply of him.  “Please.  I need you.  Please.”  He didn’t wake up, though he did release a longer breath and sink deeper into the pillows and closer to her.  Maybe it was for the best.  She thought about Fury’s final words, a threat more than anything.  _We’re going to need Captain America._   Hadn’t Steve done enough?  Suffered enough?  First Russia, and now this…  What were they even fighting for now?  SHIELD was dead.  Steve had given his life to stop HYDRA seventy years ago, and it hadn’t mattered one bit.  He wasn’t going to fight this time.  She didn’t care what Fury wanted.  SHIELD was dead, so he wasn’t her commanding officer anymore.  He wasn’t Steve’s, either.  He wasn’t in charge.  Steve _wasn’t_ going to fight.  _You need Captain America?  You can’t have him.  You can’t have him ever again!_

Who the hell was she kidding?

She fell asleep after a while.  It took longer than it should have, considering how exhausted she was, but her mind wouldn’t stop its pacing and her heart wouldn’t cease aching.  Sometime later a low groan woke her, a rumble under her ear.  She immediately leaned up.  “Steve?”  It was very dark, so much so that she wondered for a moment if she’d actually opened her eyes.  But she saw the faint outline of his face among the shadows, his lips shifting and his eyelids blinking.  She rolled over and reached for the nightstand beside the bed, flipping on the lights.  Gentle illumination spread over them.  The digital clock on the nightstand read 11:47 pm.  She’d slept for a few hours, at least.  “Steve, baby?  Can you hear me?”  She slipped the backs of her fingers over his cheek.  He groaned again.  “Wake up.”

He did.  His eyes were hazy, deeply blue and swimming in confusion and pain.  For a moment, they didn’t focus, not even with Natasha leaning directly over him.  She waited, rubbing his face with her thumb, struggling to be patient and calm while he grounded himself.  His lips shifted.  His first attempt to speak was just an indecipherable breath.  His next was thankfully more understandable.  “’tasha?”

She smiled and blinked back her tears.  She needed control and poise now, for his sake.  And hers.  “Yes.”  Control and poise appeared to be fleeting.  She kissed him, gently at first but then deeper and more passionately when he started to respond to her.  She swept a hand through the dirty, knotted mess of his hair before cupping his face tenderly.  She pulled away, bracing her forehead to his.  “Oh, God.  Steve.  You…  I…”  She had no idea what to say.

He closed his eyes, and she feared he was losing consciousness again.  But he didn’t.  He licked his lips.  “Here.”  She grabbed a cup of water from the nightstand.  She slid a hand beneath his head, propping him slightly, as she tipped the cup to his lips.  He drank slowly at first, but quickly it became desperate and greedy.  “Easy,” she admonished gently.

When he was done, she put the cup back and let him slip back into the pillows.  He blinked rapidly.  “Where… where am I?”

Natasha leaned over him again, grabbing his right hand and holding it tightly over the bandaged mess of his chest.  She squeezed it tightly.  “Stark Tower.  We got you out.  You’re safe.”

He didn’t seem to understand that (or _believe_ it – that was more disturbing and infinitely frightening).  It was like his brain couldn’t think, his eyes glazed and distant.  Blank.  _God, what did they do to him?_   But it didn’t last.  With a blink he came back to himself.  “The… the drive.  Did they…  Are you…”

She didn’t know what to say.  She didn’t know how to tell him what she had done.  “I’m fine,” she assured.  “We’re all fine.”

He was too confused and driven to be appeased with that.  His eyes were bright, almost delirious, feverish.  He reached up a shaking hand to grab her shoulder.  “The drive, Nat.  Where is it?”

Natasha stared down on him helplessly.  Shame bubbled up in her, hot and acidic, and suddenly the lights seemed to dim and the world seemed to compress around them.  That doubt that had been festering in her heart since Clint’s accusations, that had been amplified by Fury’s cold logic, was hard and harsh and undeniable.  She couldn’t lie to him.  Not after everything he’d endured.  “They got it,” she said softly.

Again, it appeared as though Steve didn’t understand.  Natasha felt her heart shudder in her chest with every beat, and she watched him, forced herself not to look away.  Steve gasped something that might have been a sob, closing his eyes and dropping his hand from her shoulder.  Desperation plied through Natasha, just as vicious as her guilt.  “I’m so sorry.  They got it, but we were able to get something else.  Some piece of the Insight carriers’ targeting system.  Stark has them now, and he’s working on a way to stop them.  I promise you, we–”

“Did they hurt you?” Steve asked, slowly with that unhinged fire back in his eyes.

“No,” she said, a little alarmed.  “No.”

Steve stared at her a moment longer, like he _still_ couldn’t accept what he was seeing.  There was something not right about this.  Natasha felt so goddamn helpless, and she couldn’t stand it.  This weakness inside her – they’d taken him and tortured him and _she_ _hadn’t stopped that_ – became too much, and she leaned down and kissed him again.  Hard, until he could taste her and _know_ she was real and they were both safe.  Whatever hell that was going on in his head, she would find a way to get through it.  “I love you,” she said breathlessly against his mouth.  “I’m with you.  You’re safe.  They can’t touch you anymore.”

“Bucky…”

“Shh.”  She reached over and switched the light back off.  Maybe she should have called Fine and had him come.  Maybe she should have called someone.  But she didn’t.  She settled back down beside Steve, draping her arm lightly across his chest and snuggling as close as she could, pressing her lips slowly to the side of his jaw.  The prickle of stubble was rough to her lips, almost like sandpaper, but she didn’t let it deter her.  She kissed down his neck, down to his shoulder.  Careful and reverent.  She felt him shiver, although with the cold or the pain or something else she didn’t know.  She reached down and pulled the quilts up over them both.  “Sleep,” she whispered.

“Can’t,” he whispered, staring up into the shadows.  His body tensed, muscles twisting tightly, and he was rigid beside her.  The corner of his eye glistened wetly, and a single tear escaped to track down to his temple.  “Can’t.  Have to…”  He swallowed thickly, and his eyes closed again of their own accord.  Pain captured his face.  “I have to…”

Any hope she had of keeping him away from this fight died a quick death.  But she couldn’t think about that.  “Not now,” she said.  She found his hand under the covers and held it tight.  “Tomorrow.”  _Project: Insight launches tomorrow._   She kissed his neck again, the soft thumping of his heart beneath her lips.  She could feel him relax, slowly, as though one muscle at a time was unraveling and loosening.   His thumb jerked over her forefinger before settling into sweeping caress.  She focused on that, the gentle slide of his skin over hers.  She watched him fall asleep, and when he was down, she closed her eyes, too.  “Tomorrow,” she whispered again.  _Tomorrow._

* * *

Tomorrow came.  It was a bright day.  Natasha felt content.  Steve was beside her, beneath her, so warm and strong.  She drew a deep breath and let it out slowly, and she could convince herself that this was his bed back in his apartment in DC and this was just another morning.  She’d snuggle deeper beside him and pull the covers up over her eyes to blot out the sun.  He’d laugh, his voice light and his hands strong and sure on her skin.  They’d share lazy kisses and caresses, reminding themselves that the day was waiting but not feeling a terribly pressing need to go and greet it.  Eventually they would.  They’d get up, make breakfast, go out for a while maybe.  Talk.  Watch TV.  Play together.  Make love.  Love each other.  Just another day before all of this hell had erupted into their lives.

But this wasn’t just another day.  She couldn’t delude herself.  Steve shifted uncomfortably beneath her.  He groaned lowly.  Her eyes opened, and she leaned up quickly.  It was 5:53 in the morning.  The light of dawn was streaming through the open windows.  She scrubbed at her eyes for a moment.  “Nat?”  She turned back to him to find him awake and watching her.  He still appeared somewhat foggy, but he was far more focused and lucid now than he had been the night before.  He blinked and licked his lips.  “Nat.”

She leaned back down.  “Steve,” she said, basking in true relief for the first time in days.  Her relief didn’t last long.  He drew a deeper breath and braced his elbows into the bed and pushed himself up.  “Wait.  Wait!”

“Gotta get up,” he groaned.  He succeeded in getting his shoulders up, wincing, sweating, and panting with the effort.  He was halfway up before his body failed him, and he slumped down into the mattress again.

“Steve, don’t,” Natasha said.  He was already trying again, peeling the blanket off his body and gingerly swinging his legs out of the bed.  She scrambled onto the floor, racing around it to get to him before he tried to stand.  “Don’t!  Listen to me.  You need to rest.”

“Can’t.”  He was already sitting upright, covered in shimmering perspiration and trembling.  “Is everyone…  Tony and Sam…”

“Everyone’s fine.”  There was so much she needed to explain to him, but she couldn’t find the words to continue.  She planted both her hands on his shoulders and pushed him back down.  He was weak enough and in enough pain that he didn’t fight.  “Stop.  You need to lie down and rest.”

He looked up at her with determined eyes.  “You know what they’re doing,” he gasped.  “You know what HYDRA is doing.”  She could only nod.  “Then you know I have to do this.”  That was it.  No argument.  She wanted to cry, but she didn’t.  He nearly was.  His eyes twinkled wetly in the early morning light.  He was a mess, frayed so much around the edges, and maybe he was awake and driving himself to get back up, but he was hurting so badly, _so_ badly.  On the verge of collapse.  She could see it because she’d seen it before.  He sagged wearily into her, and she threaded her fingers through the mess of his hair and tugged him to her stomach.  His hands came up and wrapped around her waist.  “Help me.  Please.”

 _No._   But she sighed in acquiescence.  She disentangled his hands from her and knelt between his knees.  The left was so swollen that he couldn’t bend it.  “I’ll get you cleaned up, and then I’ll get the doctor.”  Steve nodded, and she cupped his face again.  She leaned forward to kiss him, struggling not to think – not about _anything_.  Not the Winter Soldier or HYDRA.  Not Clint or Fury or SHIELD.  Not the goddamn targeting algorithm she gave back to the enemy.  Nothing but the feel of his lips to hers, of his mouth opening like the familiarity of this was finally reaching through whatever torture they had levied upon him.  She pulled away only to rain feverish kisses all over his face before seeking his mouth again.  “God, Steve…  I’m so sorry.”

His fingers pushed her hair away from her face, tucking the red locks behind her ears.  “Stop,” he whispered against her lips.  “Not your fault.  None of it.”  _None of it_.  He sighed shakily.  “Love you.  Kept me going.  Had to be strong…  Had to keep you safe, Nat.  I love you _so much._ ”

She couldn’t take that, swallowing anything else he might have said as a low grunt into her mouth.  This was more passionate, more primal.  But even that was too much, and she pulled away, terrified by the unbridled tempest in her heart.  She said nothing more, looping an arm around him and lifting as he pushed himself up.  They succeeded in getting him standing, and she draped his arm that hadn’t been so badly dislocated over her shoulders and took him about the waist.  Together they limped to the bathroom.  They stopped in front of the toilet.  “Just… uh…”

“You okay to stand alone?”

He swallowed, like he wasn’t sure, but he nodded.  He fumbled at the drawstring of the pajama pants Carter and she had dressed him in yesterday, and Natasha turned away and let him handle his business with some privacy.  She went to the bathtub and turned the water on, hot but not scalding, and searched for toiletries.  She found a bar of soap and a few washcloths.  She was hesitant to completely leave him, but she did, sprinting back into the bedroom to find the clothes that Sam had brought up the day before.  “Alright,” he called.  Gathering them up, she ran back into the bathroom.  She set the new clothes on the tiled floor beside the tub with some towels before helping him limp over.  Kneeling, she pulled his pants down.  He wavered.

“Alright up there?”

He nodded again.  She unwound the bandages from the wounds on his thighs.  She wasn’t quite brave enough to touch his left leg; he’d put almost no weight on it since staggering out of his bed, and it looked incredibly painful.  Instead, she wet one of the washcloths and scrubbed some soap onto it.  She set to wiping the blood and grime from his lower body that she hadn’t been able to wash before.  A lot of the wounds were scabbing now, and she was tender and conscientious in her work so as not to disrupt the clots.  Once she was finished, she toweled him dry.

“Sit?” she asked.  Gingerly, he did, holding his damaged arm to his chest.  She reached into the tub behind him and rewet the washcloth again and applied more soap.  Her deft fingers removed the remainder of the bandages.  Some of the wounds would require another wrapping, but most looked healed enough to be bare.  _Thank God for the serum._   She worked the warm, soapy water into his skin, getting at the crusted blood and filth from his mission to Algiers seemingly forever ago.

He was motionless, that blank expression on his face again and those tears back in his eyes.  Tears he was holding inside.  “How bad is it?” he weakly asked.

Natasha squeezed the rag over his shoulders to rinse him.  She didn’t know what to say.  The ruin done to him was upsetting, but he didn’t need to see her fear and grief.  He wasn’t focusing again, his gaze blankly centered on a point on the floor.  “You’ll be alright,” she softly promised.  He didn’t answer, squeezing his eyes shut, and for once, she really couldn’t read him.  Maybe it was because her own emotions were so jumbled.  Maybe it was because her point of reference in this crumbling world was slipping away.  Whatever it was, it frightened her.  She’d seen him low before, but not like this.  After Crimea, after being so seriously injured and so close to death, he’d been weaker than this.  On the other side of it, he’d been nearly crippled with agony, stilted and stiff and suffering.  Physically.  But emotionally…  He’d been strong, untouched, it seemed, by the pain of his recovery.  He’d had her, and that had been all he’d needed.  Easy smiles.  Laughs and optimism.  This was so much worse.  The slump of his stature.  The listless, lethargic glaze of his eyes.  The tears pooling in them.  The slow, halting breaths.  The shaking of his body.  He was crushed.  Tortured.

Nearly shaking herself, she grabbed for some shampoo and the handshower attachment to the faucet.  “Tip your head back.”  She turned the attachment on to a gentle spray and washed the dirt and blood from his hair.  Fat streams of brown and red water slipped down the planes of his back and chest.  She was tender; he winced numerous times as she worked the shampoo into his scalp, and she imagined Rollins and Rumlow and the Winter Soldier yanking on his hair.  She banished the thought, rinsing the soap away.   When she was done, she turned everything off, grabbing for the towel.  So very gently she dried his hair, crawling between his knees again.  She ran the expensive terry cloth down his face, across yellowing bruises and disappearing cuts, wiping water from his eyelashes and from the bridge of his nose and from the fullness of his lower lip.  She wrapped the towel around his shoulders.

Then she stood and went to the vanity of the bathroom in search of a few things.  She came back with a razor and some shaving cream.  Steve seemed to snap out of his stupor a little.  “You don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do,” she softly said, kneeling in front of him so that she was cradled by his bent right leg and his outstretched left one.  Cupping her hand, she sprayed the cream into it.  She carefully spread it on his face, avoiding pressing into any sore places.  She took the razor and set to shaving him.  Steve seemed to drift in his thoughts, trapped again in a sort of deadened trance she found impossible and terrifying.  He let her tilt his head as she needed, and she worked quickly and efficiently.  She dunked the razor into the tub behind her once or twice.  When she was done, she set it aside, pulled the drain on the tub, and toweled his face dry once more.  She swept her thumb over the smoothness of his jaw, brushing the tip of it over his lips.  He wasn’t looking at her.  He was _staring right at her_ , but he didn’t see her.  He was somewhere else, trapped in something else.  “Steve,” she whispered, aching so miserably inside and terrified for him.  “Steve, baby…  Talk to me.”

He dropped his gaze.  The irony of this role reversal was not lost on her.  Her stomach clenched, and she felt desperately, pathetically inadequate as he struggled with his emotions.  “The Winter Solider…” he finally murmured.  “The Winter Soldier…  It’s…  He’s…” He choked on his breath.  “He’s Bucky.”

Natasha stiffened.  She couldn’t help herself.  This small fact that had seemed paramount a few days ago had completely slipped her mind, trampled by seemingly larger matters.  She suddenly felt hot, flushing, and it was all she could do to swallow the disgusting taste in her mouth.  She tried to seem untroubled (or at least appropriately troubled, and not like she was terrified) as she pulled a clean pair of boxers and a set of gray running pants from her supply.  With no small amount of teetering and groaning, she got the clothes onto his legs, one after the other.  He lifted his rear as she pulled his pants up.  He was shivering, one step above violently.  He was still in shock.  Emotional.  Physical.  Traumatized on so many levels, down the very core of him.  He was falling apart in her hands.  “Stay here,” she softly commanded, pulling the towel tighter around him.  She went back out into the bedroom to grab bandages and an antibiotic salve, battling her grief every step of the way.  When she returned, she worked methodically, trying not to think as she applied the cream to the deeper wounds and dressed them in clean pads and gauze.  Eventually the silence became too pressing.  “Are you sure it was him?”  Some tiny, _stupid_ part of her was holding out hope.

“Yes,” he whispered.  He winced; she wasn’t sure if it was because she was hurting him.  “How could I not be?”  He was clean but so pale.  Quivering.  Cracking.  “Pierce… he made Bucky interrogate me.”  She knew that.  She’d been praying silently that it hadn’t been as awful as she feared it was.  It was clear from the hollow, haunted look in Steve’s eyes that it had been.  She finished with the bandages, eager to get him dressed so he would hopefully stop trembling.  She grabbed the shirt and got it over his head and his arms through the sleeves.  She cupped his face again, desperate for contact.  Her thumb wiped the few wayward tears escaping his eyes.  She’d never seen him cry.  “He didn’t recognize me, Nat…  He was like some sort of machine, and I was his mission.”  _Not a machine._ She thought of the cuts and stab wounds, the damage the Winter Soldier had done.  She knew enough about torture to realize those wounds had been to cause pain, not cause death.  She didn’t care if the man was Barnes.  He was a monster _._   “They took his memories.  They took his goddamn _arm_.  I kept trying to get through to him, kept trying, tried _so_ hard, but he…”  Steve’s voice wavered.  Natasha didn’t know what else to do, what she could even begin to say, so she pulled him forward into her arms and held him tight.  There was a rough, weeping breath against her shoulder, the desperate curl of his fingers into her back.  She comfortingly stroked his head.  “When I got through to him, Pierce dragged him to this – this – this _room_ under the detention block.  This was where they made him.  God help me, Nat, they strapped him in this chair and jolted his brain with enough electricity to rip the memories right out of it.  They did it to me, too.”  She grimaced, squeezing her eyes shut against the echo of his screams in her head.  “It hurt.  It hurt so bad.”

“I know,” she said softly.  “Don’t think about it now.”

“All the times they must have done it to him…  Seventy years.  My fault.  All my fault.”

“Steve, no.”

“And all this time…  The whole goddamn time, and he was right _there_ , right under us, under SHIELD, and I never knew.  He was right there being tortured by those bastards, and I _never knew._ ”

She stiffened again.  This time Steve didn’t miss it; how could he when he was this close to her?  There was no way she could pull away without upsetting him.  He leaned back, blinking a few times like he still couldn’t focus.  But then he did focus.  Right on her eyes.  “What?” he quietly asked.  She couldn’t hide from him.  Weeks ago, she would have been able to.  Weeks ago, a thousand convenient explanations would be poised on the tip of her tongue.  Now there were none.  _She couldn’t hide._   Not after she had let him into her heart.  Not after she’d given him everything.  “Nat, what?”  He was staring into her.  Staring into her soul.  And he was damn smart.  He put it together.  She had taught him to read her, to see through her lies and masks and defenses, and he did.  _He did._   “You…  No.  No, no.  It’s not possible.”

“Steve, please…”

 _“You knew?”_   It was nothing more than a strained whisper, but it was louder than thunder.  Louder than the world collapsing.  Louder than her keening heart.  His eyes were wide with shock.  Disbelief.  Denial.  “No.  Please tell me it’s not true.”

“Steve, I–”

“Tell me it’s not true!”

She couldn’t.  She damned herself a thousand times over for not telling him about Barnes when she’d had the chance.  For being such a fucking _coward_.  “I didn’t know for sure!” she blurted.  “I didn’t.  I thought – I mean, I realized it was him when we were at the exhibit, and I–”

“Why didn’t you say something?” he yelled, his voice cracking in pain.  “You should have told me!”

Lies.  So many lies.  _Excuses._ Even she didn’t believe them.  “I tried!  I tried so hard, Steve!  Everything was happening so fast, and I just…  I…  Back at Sam’s house, I tried to tell you.  I tried so many times!”

“Then why didn’t you?  _Why?_ ”

She was stammering, struggling to justify weakness and selfishness and vulnerability to someone who had none of them and could therefore never understand them.  “I couldn’t hurt you!  I was scared, and I wasn’t sure.  I couldn’t do that to you.  If I’d been wrong–”

Steve shook his head, his face fractured with agony and rage.  “I was blind-sided!  I went in there, and he came at me, and I was–”  He looked down, his hands curled tightly around the tub, his entire body taut and shaking.  His voice was soft, slow, and mechanical, but it was all a farce, and not a convincing one.  She could hear his heart breaking.  “Don’t lie to me.  Don’t you dare lie to me.  Did you _know_?”

She knew what he was thinking.  He didn’t believe her story.  He didn’t trust her.  And he wanted to know if she’d been aware of the Winter Soldier’s identity before her haphazard and unexpected revelation after the Smithsonian.  Considering all of the betrayal he’d faced in the last day, it was only reasonable.  Pierce and Rumlow.  Fury.  Clint.  And Barnes.  “I didn’t know,” she said, praying her voice was strong enough to carry her.  She’d never felt so exposed and unworthy, not even when Brushov had pushed his poison into her.  Not even when he’d unmade her as a child and unmade her _again_.  She’d _never_ been so desperate to tell the truth.  “I swear to you.  I swear on my love for you that I didn’t know who he was before we fought him on the causeway.  It just – it clicked there, and I recognized him, and I should have said something.  Believe me, I know I should have told you right away.  But I couldn’t hurt you like that.  I just couldn’t.”

Steve’s wrathful face crumpled in pain.  He jabbed his teeth into his lower lip and bit hard.  She could see him shattering, see his fortitude collapsing under the weight of his anguish.  His cheeks shone wetly as he lowered his face.  His shoulders were shaking in a mighty battle to hold himself together, like he didn’t trust her enough to let her watch him cry.  Not after this.  She thought she might be sick.  “What else?” he finally asked, glaring up at her with watery eyes.  “What else aren’t you telling me?”

“I slept with him.”

The words were out of her mouth.  They were out and she couldn’t get them back.  She should have lied or at the very least not told him (as if a lie of omission was any better than a lie itself).  She should have done _anything_ other than tell him the truth, this disgusting, vile thing that had twisted her gut and driven her in what she’d done even more than her fear of Steve getting hurt by the truth about Barnes.  It had been the fear of Steve being hurt by _her_ and what she’d done years ago, years before she’d ever met him and fallen so desperately in love with him.  It had been that fear that had kept her mouth shut when she should have been forthcoming.  And now it was out there in all of its brutal honesty, and _she couldn’t take it back._

Steve was staring at her like he didn’t recognize her.  Like he didn’t understand.  Maybe he didn’t.  He seemed so out of it, like his thoughts were all screwed up, so maybe he couldn’t make sense of it.  But he surprised her.  “When Brushov sent you to kill him.”

Hard lips and the bite of teeth.  Rough hands and strong arms.  Pleasure and release and the wonderful power of defiance.  God, she had enjoyed it.  She had enjoyed sleeping with the Winter Soldier.  With Bucky Barnes.  She closed her eyes against the memories.  “Yes.”

She could feel the weight of Steve’s eyes on her.  It was crushing.  She didn’t know why.  She’d slept with more men than she’d cared to remember, and he knew that.  She’d lived a life where sex was a tool, a weapon, and she had wielded it expertly.  He _knew_ that, and he had known it before he’d chosen to be with her.  They’d never talked about it really, not beyond what he’d learned during the mission to Crimea, but there hadn’t been any indication that he was bothered by it.  Or if he was, he loved her too much to ever make her feel ashamed of who she had been and what she had done.  And this…  The night she’d had sex with the Winter Soldier…  She could have _never_ anticipated that years later she would have fallen in love with Barnes’ old boyhood friend.  That Black Widow would have fallen in love with Captain America.  It was unfathomable, a twist of fate so unbelievable that she would have never thought it possible except that it had actually happened.  There was no logical reason she should be held accountable for one moment of passion spent on a snowy night in Moscow almost a decade ago.

Somehow, though, she was accountable.  She was because the man she loved was Steve Rogers, and Steve Rogers deserved _better_.  This was somehow betrayal of the worst sort, a betrayal years in the making, and she felt cowed by the enormity of it all, by the twisted path she had walked to lead her to this point.  There was nothing _logical_ about any of it.  The guilt inside her was so sharp it felt like a knife buried in her gut.  Steve closed his eyes again.  The pain on his face was devastating.  Deep and dark and _devastating_.  He was breaking before her eyes, breaking apart again.  He was _breaking_.  “Steve,” she whispered.  God, how she ached to touch him now.  Just as she had a moment ago.  Tender and true and intimate.  Loving.  “Steve, please.  Please!”  She reached a hand to his shoulder.  “Please.”

But her touch was like poison.  He flinched.  She felt like she was kicking him when he was down.  Like she was the one stabbing him now.  Stabbing him in the back and digging the blade in as deep as she could, twisting and twisting and _shredding_ …  “Don’t,” he whispered, his voice shaking with a sob.

“Steve, listen–”

“Don’t!” he snapped, and his eyes were open and filled with hatred, hatred and anger and ice that seemed to freeze her very soul.  Tears streaked down his face, tears he roughly wiped away.  He pushed himself up, wavering and shaking the whole time.  She made to grab him and steady him, but there was a warning in his glare that stopped her dead in her tracks.  “Don’t touch me.”

“I’m sorry!”

“No.  I can’t.  I can’t!”

 _Stop this.  Stop him._   Her eyes flooded and burned.  Her heart pounded.  She wanted to tell him that it didn’t matter, that she _loved him_.  She wanted to make this right.  She _needed_ to make this right.  Deep in her soul, she knew she couldn’t.  This was an impossible situation, one wrought by her own mistakes.  Her own weaknesses.  There was no justification for what she’d done, for keeping the truth from him.  And there was no way to make it right. 

But she had to try.  She had to.  _God, please, not this…_   “Steve, please, _please!_  Listen to me.  Wait.  Wait!  Please stop–”

He limped to the door, nearly losing his balance, but he didn’t fall.  And he didn’t stop.  He left her there.

_He left her._


	15. Chapter 15

Steve made it about as far as the living room couch before his body completely gave out on him.  He collapsed into the arm of it, his fingers curling into the expensive leather, wide-eyed and gasping and struggling with the pain.  So much goddamn _pain_.  Sweat dribbled into his eyes, mixing with tears, and he squeezed them shut against the sting.  There was a scream building in his throat.  He clenched the couch with clammy fingers, squeezing and squeezing until he was pretty sure he ripped the upholstery.  He was bending under the weight of everything.  _Everything_.  The scream was climbing and climbing, pushing its way higher and higher until he was choking to keep it in.  Choking on strangled sobs, on bitterness, on hurt and rage and so much grief.  _Choking._   The warm metal fingers around his neck, warm with his blood, digging deeper and deeper and coiling tighter until he couldn’t breathe.  _Bucky._ How could he?  _Clint._   How…  How…  _Natasha._

He heard Rumlow’s voice.  _“We’re going to make you scream, Cap.”_

_No!_

He opened his eyes and sucked in a shuddering, weeping breath, his heart crumpling and his body sagging.

How could they do this to him?

He lingered there for what felt like a long time, shivering, sobbing, fighting to rise above it.  Eventually, he did.  The thundering of his heart slowed.  He got control of his breathing.  He swallowed and swallowed until that scream was back down inside him.  He decided then and there as he was reclaiming himself that he wasn’t going to let it out again.  _Ever._   It wasn’t rational, but, then, none of this was.  He wasn’t going to let himself be hurt again.  _“Promise me you won’t let me hurt you again.”_   She had.  _She had_.  And this hurt worse than being shot, than fighting the Red Guardian.  This _hurt_.

She’d known about Bucky, and she hadn’t told him.

_She slept with Bucky._

When the roar of his pulse between his ears quieted, he imagined he could hear her.  She was in the bathroom, weeping, and the distance between them was unbearable.  Steve closed his eyes again against the fresh sting of tears.  He was so cold, the warmth from the bath and her touch fading from his damp skin and leaving him shivering anew.  Ice in his body, invading his lungs.  Ice in his heart.  _Go back._   The thought came unbidden, pouring from his breaking heart and surging through his addled brain.  It didn’t matter what she’d done.  She’d been trying to protect him.  And there was no way he could blame her for sleeping with the Winter Soldier years before he’d even met her.  There was no reasonable way he could blame her for the crazy, unpredictable way this had worked out.

But there was _nothing_ reasonable about this.

 _Go back.  Go back to her._   Despite his anger, the pain pouring from a heart that had been ripped open and scraped so raw, he couldn’t stand the thought of her crying.  The thought of her guilt, of her suffering for things beyond her control.   He couldn’t _bear_ it, her pain repulsive and damning, even more than his in some ways.  He loved her.  He wanted her and nothing else.  He’d given his life, _everything_ , for her.  _He loved her._

 _Go back.  Tell her it’s okay.  It_ is _okay.  Go back.  Go back and be with her._

He couldn’t.  He wasn’t going to be used and manipulated anymore.  He wasn’t _anyone’s_ victim.  He pushed himself up, straightening his battered form, gritting his teeth through the stiff discomfort.  Pain was just pain.  He could overcome it, endure it, drive past it like he always had before.  The serum would get him through this, heal him, restore him, just like it _always_ had before.  It would put his broken body back together.

And his broken heart?

He’d learned a few things from Natasha.

His broken heart he could _ignore_.

* * *

Out in the hallway, walking proved more difficult.  Steve was exhausted; just the simple act of leaving his room and limping part of the way down the spacious corridor was enough to suck the energy right out of him.  Natasha was right, much to his chagrin.  He belonged in bed.  His left leg was a damn mess again, swollen and braced and unbending.  The internal injuries were substantial; his memories of the surgery to save his life were sketchy but best left unexplored.  Needless to say, his entire abdomen was tender and protested every movement, even the small ones.  His chest ached, a hollow, dull misery that rose and fell with each short drag of air into his lungs.  He was sore all over.  Maybe the knife wounds and the blunt trauma were healing, but he’d learned time and time again that sometimes the process of healing was even more painful than getting hurt in the first place.  He was dizzy and nauseous and weak.  His head was wracking, pulsing in time with his heart, and his thoughts were still disjointed and not quite his own.  And his back hurt.  _Let’s not forget that._   He knew he wasn’t ready for this.

“Captain Rogers.”  Steve looked back over his shoulder, searching for the source of the voice.  It took him a moment to remember that Tony had some sort of AI installed in the Tower.  He’d been here a few times since the Battle of New York to visit Stark.  Tony had had some grand vision of turning his Tower into the headquarters of the Avengers.  Steve had helped him with the plans, but he’d been so busy with SHIELD that a lot of their ideas had been put on the backburner and they waylaid completely.  With Thor back in Asgard until last fall and Banner more than reticent to be regularly involved with the team, the Avengers hadn’t assembled since New York.  Steve had spoken to Fury about it once and it became more than obvious that the World Security Council was not so subtly pulling away from the Avengers Initiative.  Maybe the Avengers had saved the world from the Chitauri, but there had been a hell of a lot of collateral damage, property and political especially.  There had been a couple of missions shortly after New York that Captain America, Iron Man, Hawkeye, and Black Widow had run as a team, but beyond that, Fury had essentially cut Stark loose and asked Steve to join SHIELD instead, as if SHIELD had been a more reputable and stable environment.  At the time, it had been, he supposed.  In retrospect, he should have fought harder to keep the team together.  When the Mandarin incident had occurred, Steve had gone to Fury to ask for permission to assist, permission Fury hadn’t given him on orders from the Council.  He’d still called Tony to see if he’d needed help, and Tony had told him it was okay, that it wasn’t worth ruffling the Council’s feathers.  And when the alien invasion had nearly destroyed Greenwich, SHIELD had turned a blind eye.  In retrospect, Steve should have _seen_ the lies.

That was neither here nor there.  “Captain Rogers?  Sir?  Are you well?”

“Fine,” he managed, snapping from his thoughts.

“Shall I summon the doctor?  Or perhaps Mr. Stark or Mr. Wilson?”

“No.”  He swallowed the burn of bile in the back of his throat, leaning into the wall unabashedly for a moment.  “No, thank you.  Where are they?”

“If you get into the elevator, I will take you.”

“Thanks.”  He limped down the hallway, feeling a bit stronger for every step he successfully took.  He reached the elevator which was waiting for him, and once inside, JARVIS took him up a few floors.  The doors swished open revealing a spacious area teeming with technology.  Everything was sleek, elegant lines made of glass, chrome, and steal.  Walking through a series of secured doors (which JARVIS opened for him instantly), he found himself in a large place.  He recognized it.  This was the command center for the Avengers Tony had mentioned designing maybe six months ago.  The war room, as Tony had called it.  He’d shown Steve the blueprints one night when Steve had stopped in New York on his way back from Europe to DC.  Apparently Tony had run with his plans.  A huge computer display was in the center of the room, flanked by desks and workbenches and a circular steel table with the symbolic “A” of the Avengers carved into its gleaming surface.  A slew of Iron Man suits lined one wall.  There were places for other things, weapons and suits of the other Avengers, but they were all empty.

Gathered around one of the workbenches were Sam, Tony, and Clint.  _Clint._   Steve’s steps faltered for a moment.  He had vague, jumbled memories of Clint rescuing him, of Clint freeing his hands and pulling him through the Triskelion and guarding his body with his own.  He wondered momentarily if he had imagined it, but then he hazily recalled overhearing that Clint had brought something out of the Triskelion to stop HYDRA and decided that somehow Clint had played everyone all along.  Him most of all, it seemed.  His legs were rooted and his blood ran cold with fear despite the logical procession of thoughts in his head.  It was an involuntary reaction, born of betrayal and terror, and when Clint saw him, his face softened and his eyes filled with regret.  “Cap,” he said in worry.

Sam’s attention was drawn from whatever Tony was working on, and he was across the room in a flash.  “Jesus, Steve.  What the hell are you doing?”

Steve was too worn and hurt to do anything but slump into Sam’s sturdy frame.  “What’s happening?” he asked hoarsely.

Sam adjusted his grip on him more securely.  “What’s happening is you are getting your stupid ass back into bed.”

“No.”  Steve summoned up his “Captain America” voice (at least, that was what Bucky had always called it) and shook his head.  Frankly it was flimsy and pathetic as hell, but he wasn’t sitting this out.  “There’s no time.”

Sam shook his head.  “Steve, come on.”

“Sam.”  He silenced his friend with only that and a look.   Sam’s face tightened in a concerned frown, and Steve felt a tad bit like a bully for brushing aside the other man’s concern and insisting on his way, but he wasn’t going back to bed.  Not to lay there and think and feel and get lost in the hell so close to the surface in his mind.

Clint had already gone and retrieved a chair, which he wheeled closer to the desk.  He came forward with a strange mixture of nonchalance and complete shame contorting his face.  For his own part, Steve found it difficult to meet the archer’s gaze.  Sam helped him limp over to the chair, and he sat gingerly, keeping his hurt leg outstretched.  He panted, wiping the back of his hand across his face to smear away the sweat and embarrassing tears.  Thankfully, the others didn’t say anything.  The group of men was frankly silent, and Steve could feel them all watching him.  Watching and worrying and questioning.  It was almost too damn much, the paranoia and pain bred into him these last few days irking his gooseflesh and making him feel even more uncomfortable like his skin was crawling.  Ironically, Barton was the one who ended the awkward quiet.  “So, uh…  I’m not into dragging shit out longer than it needs to be.  I’m just going to say what needs to be said.”  Steve was having a hard time focusing with the ringing in his ears and the aches assailing him, but he managed to, lifting his head and meeting Clint’s gaze.  He sort of figured what was coming, and Clint deserved his attention.  “I did what I had to do.  But that doesn’t mean I wanted to.  And that doesn’t make it right.  I – I’m so sorry, Cap.”

Steve nodded, not certain how to feel.  Numb.  Numb was about all he could muster.

“By the time they brought you in, I was already embedded in Pierce’s operation.  If I hadn’t taken you down, my cover would’ve been blown, and the stakes were too high.”  Clint looked… pale.  Haunted.  Hurt himself in a way that went deep.  “I’m sorry,” he offered again.

And Steve nodded again.  It was the only thing he could do right now.  This was going to take time.  He idly realized that in the back of his mind where things weren’t so riddled with emotions and damaged.  It was going to take time to get over this, to forgive, to let the scars heal.  Right then, acceptance was good enough for them both.  Clint was trying to read him, but there wasn’t much to be found.  He, too, was smart enough to realize that this wasn’t going to be resolved with one apology.  And he was smart enough to realize that they needed to put this behind them and work together because the next mission was already looming on the horizon, far more important than the last.

Steve found his voice after a long moment.  “Did you know that Fury was alive?”

Barton shook his head.  “No.  Hill played it close to her chest.  I guess she figured she was protecting him.  As long as Pierce thought he was dead, they wouldn’t come after him again.”

“Well, ain’t that nice,” Tony remarked sarcastically.  He was working at the computer, his deft fingers capably manipulating the holographic display.  Steve couldn’t even trace the blur of glowing lights.  “Fury covers his own ass and leaves the rest of you to be shot and tortured and hung out to dry.”  Steve gritted his teeth, not because he didn’t agree, but because he _did._   He didn’t know everything that had happened, but it was sadly apparent that Fury, through his own choices or not, had left them leaderless and rudderless while SHIELD imploded.  Maybe he, too, couldn’t have anticipated the path things would take – Steve turning himself in and Clint faking allegiance to Pierce and Tony getting involved – but that was no excuse for leaving his people in the mud.  It was abhorrent to him; in the army he’d learned a leader’s highest responsibility was always to his men, protecting them and guiding them and honoring them.  Tony glanced at him a couple of times, and his face actually softened.  “So…  You and Big Red.  Gotta admit, Cap, I did not see that one coming.  Not in a million years.”  Steve stiffened.  “An ex-KGB agent got to be the one to pop Captain America’s patriotic cherry.  The Russians debauching a national icon.  How long has it been going on?”

“Tony,” Steve said softly in warning.  It was good-natured ribbing, but he couldn’t take it.

Tony laid off.  Thankfully.  “Where is Natasha?” Sam asked.

Steve just shook his head, silently pleading that they drop it.  “Where are we?” he asked instead.

Tony cocked an eyebrow, like he wasn’t sure how to answer that.  “Well, where the USB drive from hell was locked up with crazy ass defenses, these targeting gizmos are surprisingly transparent.  Like so transparent that I’ve been running everything a couple of times to make sure I’m not imagining that this was so easy.  I mean, the sort of assholes who would be capable of hacking JARVIS aren’t usually this stupid.”

“Or careless,” Clint added darkly.

“Or that,” Tony said.

Steve didn’t follow all of this, but it didn’t seem totally relevant.  “So you can stop it?”

Tony smiled cheekily.  “Wouldn’t be much of a genius if I couldn’t.”

“Man, cut the crap,” Sam said, but his words didn’t have any heat to them.

Tony shot him half of a glare and flung his hands away from him.  Whatever was on his holographic display enlarged in a nauseating show of glowing lines and numbers.  Some of them were flashing.  Tony hopped off his stool and headed into the display until it was completely surrounding him.  “So that algorithm, terrifying as it was, was completely beyond cracking.  I couldn’t even copy the damn thing onto our mainframe, and with the way it infected JARVIS, there was no time to examine it.  But this…  This is a thing of simplistic beauty.  All these targeting blades do is receive coordinates in series from the satellites.  Minimal encryption.  And, _and_ – this is the best part – I think these things are specifically for some sort of long range weapons system.  There must be a fairly massive array of them aboard each carrier, but it’s a one-to-one correspondence.  One blade for each gun.  _But_ they all are networked together and synced into each helicarrier’s overall targeting system.  Probably more efficient, and definitely better if you wanted to turn the entire arsenal of weapons onto a single series of targets, but monumentally weak from a hacking standpoint, because what this means is all we have to do is swap out _one_ blade and the entire thing goes to shit.”  Tony rolled his eyes a little.  “Shit for them, I mean, but awesome for us.”

Steve squinted, struggling to make sense of this.  “So we just need to get onboard the helicarriers and swap out one of the targeting blades.”

Tony snapped his fingers and hands together in a snazzy rhythm.  “Yep.”

Somehow that didn’t seem as hard as it should have.  Maybe surviving a day’s worth of torture at the hands of HYDRA had distorted his perception of things.  Maybe this was just one more mission built upon insanity, no less crazy than going one-on-one with an insane Russian super soldier or leading a team of six superheroes against an alien invasion thousands strong or fighting a man with a red skull.  Nothing was quite real anymore.  He felt loose and lost and weightless, because this actually appeared _doable_.

But it wasn’t.  It really wasn’t.  “Assuming you’re right, Stark, and this is as simple as changing a few of these server blades around, how in the world do we get on board the helicarriers?”  Clint shook his head, folding his arms across his chest.  “HYDRA has the Insight Bay heavily fortified, and that’s assuming you can get inside the Triskelion, which is probably the most secure building in the world.  There’s no doing it, at least not without a sizeable army.  And you can bet Pierce is going to have his pet guarding it.  We’re going to have to take him out.”

Steve jerked.  He didn’t mean to, hadn’t wanted to _think_ beyond the here and now.  Natasha.  Bucky.  But it pushed at him unbidden, and the others were already too keened on his state not to see it.  “Steve?”  Sam’s voice was soft, nonthreatening, but Steve looked down all the same.  His eyes were burning again.  “What’s wrong?”

There was no sense in lying.  The truth was out there, and there was no denying it.  He bitterly wondered if Natasha really had just put two and two together about the Winter Soldier’s identity.  He felt like a right bastard for doubting her, but he couldn’t help himself.  He’d been lied to and kicked down too many times to trust.  And at the very least, if she was being truthful and had just coincidentally figured this out, who else had?  How many _goddamn people knew?_   “The Winter Soldier…  He’s my friend.”

They were silent, staring at him incredulously like they, too, couldn’t believe it.  They were waiting for him to explain.  Steve thought he might lose it when a barrage of unwanted memories spanning from ice cream cones in summer at Ebbets Field to Bucky’s hand slipping from his on a speeding train in the snowy Alps to the Winter Soldier bearing down on him and driving a knife into his side flooded over him.  But he didn’t lose it.  He could keep it all contained.  _Dead inside._   He was starting to realize how that felt.  And he was starting to see why Natasha liked it.  “Bucky.”

“Bucky Barnes?  _The_ Bucky Barnes?” Tony asked.  Of course Tony would know of Bucky.  Tony had told him once that Howard Stark had put his young son to sleep every night with war stories about Captain America and the Howling Commandos bravely taking on HYDRA.  Tony appraised Steve in blatant and uncharacteristic concern, like he was scared Steve was going crazy.  Steve knew he wasn’t.  It was the whole goddamn world that had gone crazy.  “That’s impossible.  He died in 1945.”

“I know how it sounds,” Steve said, “but it’s true.  It’s him.”

“Wait,” Sam said.  He squinted, like he couldn’t get his head around this.  “The Winter Soldier is _your_ friend.  From when you were in the war.”

Steve sucked in a long breath to keep steady.  “From when we were kids, back in Brooklyn.  We met when I was five and he was six.”  The memories were there again, pushing against him.  Things that he’d cherished.  Things about which he didn’t often think, like little nostalgic rewards for adapting so well to the future.  He shook his head.  “Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky.”

“How is that even possible?  It was like seventy years ago,” Sam said sharply.  This was upsetting him, too.

Steve hadn’t had the time or mental capacity to really think about it until now.  Pierce had mentioned something down in that lab…  “Zola.”  He felt sick to his stomach.  “Bucky’s whole unit was captured in Italy in 1943.  Zola experimented on him.  Whatever he did helped Bucky survive the fall…”  The image of Bucky tumbling away, eyes wide in sheer terror, hand still reaching for Steve, made Steve close his eyes.  His own voice, loud and angry.  _“Sir, we have to go back!  We have to search for him!”_

_“Our orders stand, Rogers.  Zola goes back to London under SSR escort, and that means you.”_

_“I’m not leaving him there!  If there’s even the slightest chance–”_

_“There isn’t.”_

Steve winced, closing his eyes.  “HYDRA must have found him.”

“None of that’s your fault, Cap,” Barton declared quietly.

Clint had no idea how _much_ it was his fault.  “They kept Bucky in cryostasis,” Steve said, surging on with what he knew.  “Had some kind of… machine that reprogrammed him.  Wiped his memories.”

“Jesus,” Tony whispered hoarsely.  “Every time I think this situation can’t possibly get more fucked up, it does.”

For some reason, that was enough to jolt Steve from his pain.  He looked up, his gaze sharpening, things coming back into focus.  He took a deep breath, pushing himself up and out of the chair.  His eyes flicked over the array of data around him, the programs inside the targeting blades that Tony had hacked and dissected.  “You got a plan to stop Project: Insight?” he asked.

The others shared concerned looks, watching as Steve limped closer to stand in front of Stark.  None of them moved to steady him, though their desire to do just that was nearly a tangible force.  Instead they watched as Captain America pulled himself back together before their very eyes.  “Yeah,” Tony said.  “Yeah, I think we have a plan.”

Steve exhaled slowly.  “Good.  Get everyone up here, and then let’s hear it.”

* * *

A few minutes later, their small group was gathered around the glimmering conference table, the one adorned with the Avengers logo.  The remainder of SHIELD.  All they had of the Avengers.  It wasn’t much.  Fury and Hill and Carter.  Clint and Tony.  Sam.  Steve.  Natasha.  The table was circular, but somehow she felt to be sitting in the corner, a dark and shadowy corner like she was trying to hide.  She didn’t look at him as he stood at the other side, positioning herself seemingly as far from him as she could.  Her expression was blank, her skin sallow.  Steve knew her way too well not to see the pain.  And the shame.  And the _fear_.  It killed him.  It hurt so badly to see her suffering.  But no matter how much he wanted to comfort her, he didn’t.  His own aching heart wouldn’t let him be the one to break, the one to go over to her.  Maybe that was petty and childish, but he was too low and _betrayed_ to get above it.  And this wasn’t the time or the place.  That was part of the problem.  They’d let their emotions get in the way of their jobs, and everyone had paid the price.

The computer was displaying the schematics of the Insight helicarriers.  Steve turned his gaze away from Natasha’s lowered face and looked them over, recalling the sheer enormity of the ships when Pierce had taken him to see them.  In the corner of the holographic display, a timer was counting down.  Apparently whatever contact Hill had in the Triskelion had relayed the exact launch time.  They had six hours.  Six hours to figure out how to save the world with a handful of people, and they were up against one of the strongest spy and military organizations on the planet.  Steve had faced long odds before and come out on top, but somehow this seemed worse.  _Somehow_.  He knew damn well why.

His best friend was unwillingly fighting for the wrong side.  That was why.

It seemed he wasn’t the only one caught up in the past, in the mistakes, in the twisted road behind them that had led to this point.  Fury’s eye was narrowed.  His arm was still tight in a sling, his face covered in healing wounds.  He looked ill.  And angry.  “Pierce…  This was a man who turned down the Nobel Peace Prize.  He said peace wasn’t an achievement.  It was a _responsibility_.”  He shook his head in disgust, leaning forward and settling his glare on Steve.  “See, it’s stuff like this that gives me trust issues.”

Sharon didn’t seem interested in lamenting.  “Isn’t there anyway we can just stop the launch?  Get in there and prevent them from even going up?”  She looked around hopefully.

Hill leaned forward, bracing her elbows on the table and folding her fingers together.  “Maybe.  But it’s a long shot.  The Insight Bay is swarming with HYDRA.  And you can bet that Pierce has got the command center locked down.”

“Sir, what about the Council?  Are they in on this?” Sharon asked, turning her gaze to Fury.

It was Hill who answered.  “We don’t know.”

“But even if they aren’t, I don’t think they’re accepting my calls anymore,” Fury sharply responded.  “Pierce branded me a traitor.  Covered his damn bases.”  Steve closed his eyes at the shudder crawling at the small of his back.  “You can bet anything I have to say isn’t going to carry much weight.”

“And this Pierce guy doesn’t sound like the kind who would stop if his boss told him to, anyway,” Sam added.  He could have been intimidated by all of this, him essentially a civilian in a room full of SHIELD agents, a billionaire, and Captain America.  But he wasn’t.  He appraised Fury evenly.  “How deep does it go?  Can we count on any help from within SHIELD?”

Fury looked dismayed.  It was so rarely seen on his stern and stoic countenance that it was all that much more distressing.  But, again, it was Hill who answered.  “I’m sure not everyone is HYDRA.  But you can bet everyone working on Project: Insight is.”

“The STRIKE Team,” Steve added in a deadened tone.

“Which means most of SHIELD’s military forces are probably at the very least compromised, if not flat out against us,” she went on with a sympathetic nod.  “Bottom line is whoever’s not HYDRA on the inside has no idea what’s going on, and coordinating enough of a resistance in this amount of time is impossible.  If they come out shooting on our side, great, but we shouldn’t count on it.”

Clint leaned back in his chair, his face cool but his eyes troubled.  He looked to Tony.  “What about the rest of the Avengers?  Banner?  Thor?”

Tony heaved half a sigh.  “You know as much about Thor as I do.  He’s gone AWOL after the Greenwich incident.  I haven’t seen him or heard from him.  I have JARVIS trying to track down his girlfriend.  No dice.  And as for Bruce…  He tends to not take his cellphone on these little jaunts of his to the third world.  I’ve been calling, but we seem to be SOL.”

“Wonderful,” Fury darkly remarked.

Tony’s eyes hardened.  “Hey, you’re the one who shelved the Avengers to start with.”

Fury appeared to be in no mood to be challenged.  “I didn’t have a choice, Stark.    You damn well know that.”

“Well, looking back, it seems orders from the Council and Pierce might have been suspect, don’t you think?” Tony returned.  “Seems like _this_ –”  He angrily gestured to the schematics of the helicarriers before them.  “–was growing right under your nose and you never noticed.”

Fury’s eye flashed.  “I _noticed._ ”

“How many paid the price before you did?  Besides the obvious even.”  Tony glanced at Steve, Steve who was standing as tall and straight as he could but everyone knew it was a façade.  Even he did.  His weight was all on his right leg.  And the pain was constantly threatening to overwhelm him.  _Everything_ was constantly threatening to overwhelm him now.  _Keep going.  Keep fighting._

Bucky’s voice, so strong and sure.  _“I know you can do it, Stevie.”_

Fury sighed.  “Look, Cap, I didn’t know about Barnes.”

Steve couldn’t help his anger.  “Even if you had, would you have told me?  Or would you have compartmentalized that, too?”  He couldn’t help a harsh glance at Natasha, either, but she was staring blankly at the edge of the table.  She looked as dead and damaged as he felt.

Fury found it within himself to look at Steve evenly.  His expression was soft with regret.  Shame.  Sorrow.  _Genuine_ sorrow.  “I’m sorry.”  That was all he said, like that had the power to erase the days he’d spent unwittingly serving HYDRA when he’d been serving SHIELD.  Like that had the power to make the fact that he and Natasha had nearly died for a lie in Russia _okay_.  Like it could undo the damage, take away the pain, wipe away the longs hours he’d spent at his best friend’s unforgiving mercy.

That was all Fury said, and Steve wanted to stay angry.  He desperately wanted to.  That was unlike him, against who he was as a person, but this experience had changed him.  It had undone who he had become in this new world, rendering him alone and lost and reeling.  It had stabbed into his life, into his soul, driving all the way back into who he had been before the ice and before the war.  Steve Rogers from Brooklyn who wanted nothing more than to do the right thing.  _I don’t know what that is anymore._ This horror had ripped into the core of him, the core of what he knew was true and good, and he was bleeding.

_“I’ll patch you up, Steve.  You’ll be as good as new.”_

Getting angry was pointless.  It wouldn’t solve anything.  Bucky had always been the one of the two of them with the shorter fuse.  Whenever Steve got hurt or picked on, he’d gotten angry.  It never did any good.

There was silence that followed, stretched long and miserable by the weight of everything Fury was trying to fix with those two simple words.  Eventually, Clint sighed and leaned forward in his chair.  “Assuming that no one can get in there and prevent the launch…”  He said that in such a way that suggested he wasn’t sure of it, that he was thinking something through.  His eyes flicked to Maria.  “How do we stop it?”

Hill stood, tapping a few controls on the sleek surface of the table.  The holographic display zoomed in on one of the helicarriers.  “Each carrier has targeting blades that guide their weapons systems, one hundred twenty in all.  These interface with the Insight satellites, where Zola’s algorithm will calculate the coordinates and feed them to the helicarriers.  Thanks to Stark, we now have three blades that are reprogrammed to disrupt that targeting feed.  We need to breach the helicarriers–”  At that, the display zoomed into the underside of the carrier, where an inverted dome was attached to the belly.  Steve recognized it because Pierce had showed it to him.  The server room.  “–and replace one of the blades with our own.  It has to be this specific one.”  The display focused in on four rows of identical chips in a case.  Each rack had thirty blades, and the one in question was one in the middle – random if Steve had ever seen it.

“Yeah, from what I can tell, that one is the most completely linked with the others in the targeting network.  Take it out, they all go down,” Tony said.

The image zoomed back out to a map, where the three helicarriers were shown with other dots obviously in orbit.  Lines connected them all.  “Once the helicarriers reach three thousand feet, they will triangulate with the satellites and become fully weaponized.  We need to have our targeting blades in place before that happens, or…”  Hill actually looked afraid.  “A whole lot of people are going to die.”  She shook her head.  “And getting one done won’t cut it.  We need all three.”

“How much time do we have from when the helicarriers launch until they reach three thousand feet?” Sharon asked.

Hill looked displeased.  “A little less than ten minutes.”

The size of the problem was crushing, and its complexity was compounding by the second.  Barton released a long breath that puffed out his lips a little.  “Is this where we cry ourselves a river that we don’t have the Hulk?”

“Hey,” Tony said with mock hurt in his voice.  “Not for nothing, but we have Iron Man.”  He shot a glance at Steve.  “And Captain America.”  He was clearly waiting for Steve to agree.  Strangely enough, back in Yalta surrounded by traitors with his back broken and his body battered nearly beyond function he’d felt more certain of himself heading off to fight the Red Guardian than he did now.  But he managed a nod.  “I can take at least one of them,” Tony said with extra bravado.  “Cap?”

Steve nodded again.  “Not a problem.”

“Count me in,” Sam said like they weren’t talking about each of them single-handedly taking on a huge, heavily armored and armed, HYDRA-infested helicarrier.  Steve regarded him in confusion and concern.  Sam shrugged and actually smiled, an easy, affable grin which immediately reminded Steve that he wasn’t alone in this.  “Turns out maybe God or someone was looking out for us when you ran into me.  Small world and all that.”

“What’s he talking about?” Hill asked, confused and a tad annoyed.

Tony touched a few spots on the control console for the table, and the images of the helicarriers were whisked away.  In their places was a slew of Air Force documents, all detailing something called the EXO FALCON.  Steve narrowed his eyes, coming closer to get a better look.  He shook his head.  “Tony, where did you get this?”

“The Pentagon,” Tony answered matter-of-factly.  He shrugged.  “Well, the docs.  The tech was already mine.”

“This is Bakhmala,” Hill said, quickly digesting the information before her that detailed an Air Force rescue mission.  Top secret, it seemed.  “The Khalid Kandil mission.  That was you?”  Sam folded his arms over his chest, nodding.  His eyes gained a touch of a haunted hurt.  Hill seemed impressed.  “You didn’t say you were a pararescuer.”

Steve saw a picture among all of the open files.  It was of Sam and another man, walking and talking.  Friends.  It instantly reminded him of pictures of Bucky and him from the war, side by side, caught in a candid moment.  “Is this Riley?” he asked Sam.  Sam nodded again, and that pained look became more intense.

Both Sam and Riley were wearing some sort of metallic harness.  Tony brought the specs closer.  “Few years ago the Air Force brought me in to consult on this project.  Built for rescue ops, the sort normally requiring stealth chutes and a hell of a lot of good luck.  This mission was the one and only time the EXO FALCON flew before it was grounded.”

“Why?” Clint asked.

“Too expensive.  The Air Force only requisitioned two.  One never came back from Afghanistan.  Other’s locked up in some military installation somewhere.  But I kept one, and the suit works just fine.  Like nothing you’ve ever seen.”  Tony smiled.  “Why fall in when you can fly?”

That was something of a comfort.  If the helicarriers got into the air, at least they might have a chance given that two of them could fly.  Honestly, if they had ever needed the Hulk, it was now.  Still, there was no sense in lamenting it.  There wasn’t time for Banner to get here, even if they could get in contact with him.  Six hours was all they had.  Frankly, Steve didn’t like the idea of Sam or Sharon or Tony or _any_ of them being involved with this.  Not Natasha.  God, not Natasha.  This was going to be dangerous, extremely so, and as far as he was concerned, this wasn’t their fight.  This was his, his unfinished business with old enemies.  But he had no chance of success alone.  So he sighed and nodded to Sam’s involvement.

Fury leaned back in his chair.  “That’s the plan, then.  Get down there, try to stop the launch if we can.  If we can’t, take down Project: Insight so we can salvage something of–”

Steve’s ire came back, abrupt, hot, and demanding.  “We’re not salvaging anything,” he interrupted.  “We’re not just stopping Project: Insight. We’re taking down SHIELD.”

Fury saddled him with a surprised glare.  Steve knew him too well not to see the hurt.  “SHIELD had nothing to do with this!”

“SHIELD’s been compromised.”  Steve took a step closer to the table, not caring about the pain that shot up his leg.  “You said so yourself.  It’s _never_ been what we thought it was.  You sent me out there to get that algorithm because you knew things weren’t right!  You knew it.”

“It was Pierce, not me, that got us in this situation,” Fury returned.  He wore the desperation of a man trying to hold onto something he built.  Something he loved.  Something he _knew_.  “I was blind, I’ll admit that.  But SHIELD is not HYDRA.  What SHIELD stands for always has been and always will be something good.”

Steve thought about Peggy, about what she had put her life behind, about building a better world.  He prayed with all of his heart that she never learned what a mockery her work had become.  That she never discovered SHIELD had been infected at its inception, like some grotesque parasite had laid its eggs in SHIELD’s very foundation, spreading and spreading and infesting _everything._ “Tell me where SHIELD ends and HYDRA begins.  _Tell me._ ”  Steve held firm, staring the Director down, and Fury eventually caved and averted his eyes because he couldn’t.  He couldn’t, and he knew it.  Steve shook his head.  “I told you after we came back from Russia that if I found out SHIELD wasn’t protecting the world, wasn’t doing what was _right_ , that I’d take the whole thing down.  This is it.  This is where I keep that promise.  You gave me this mission, and _this_ is how it ends.”  He drew a deep breath.  “SHIELD, HYDRA…  It all goes.  _All of it._ ”

Fury opened his mouth, probably to argue further, but a soft declaration from his right stopped him.  “He’s right.”  It was Hill.  She’d taken a seat at her Director’s side, her hands folded before her almost nervously, her blue eyes wide and a little wet.  She gave a small nod.  “He’s right.”

Fury turned sharply to Sharon, who worriedly eyed Hill but eventually nodded as well.  At Natasha, who finally spared Steve a brief look before bobbing her head in affirmation.  At Clint.  “I’m with Rogers,” he said.  “Always have been.”  Steve felt a little warmer with that, with Clint’s small, loyal glance and nod.

“Hey, you’re the one who put him in charge of us,” Tony said with half a shrug.  “And he’s the leader of the Avengers, so technically I have to go along with him.  Part of that ‘team-player’ BS you were always cramming down my throat.”

Fury’s eye shot to Sam, although why Steve couldn’t say.  Sam gave the same shrug.  “Don’t look at me.  I do what he does, just slower.”

Fury watched his people, all that was left of SHIELD, close ranks with Captain America.  He was alone in his corner.  Just as Natasha had said days ago, though, Fury was many things but stupid was not one of them.  The writing on the wall was right there in front of his eyes.  Now he had to read it.  He heaved another sigh, his scowl dropping from his face, and leaned back in his chair again.  “I guess you’re giving the orders now, Captain.”

Steve lifted his chin and stood tall.  _Damn right I am._

* * *

It was almost time to go.  In about an hour, they would head out, each with their missions.  Tony had reprogrammed the targeting blades, one for each helicarrier, with his own algorithm.  The plan was solidified, prepared, briefed and briefed again.  Everyone was ready.

But Steve couldn’t bring himself to go inside.  He’d been back to the suite Tony had given him, flanked by the inventor himself and Sam.  Doctor Fine had been there waiting for him.  Wounds were checked and redressed.  Fine wasn’t pleased with his choice to fight, but he didn’t do more than object once and then stress he needed to take care.  Honestly, Steve had fought in worse shape.  His wounds pained him, but just in the couple of hours he’d been up and walking around, he felt better.  Worse than the physical maladies were the mental ones, and those he bottled up and pushed down deep.  There was no time to let the horror of his memories trouble him now.  No time to be afraid, to suffer with his anger and grief.  No time.

Yet here he was, doing it all the same.  Standing outside, all alone and drowning in his head.  Chewing on the misery and making himself swallow it.  It made him sick, but he couldn’t stop.  It was hot, summery, but the sun didn’t feel warm on his skin.  He tried to let the heat sink in, tried to let it soothe him, but it didn’t.  Nothing seemed capable of melting the ice in his heart.  His mind was simultaneously everywhere and nowhere, plunging through memories.  Bucky in Brooklyn.  Bucky during the war.  Bucky beating him, his eyes dead and void of any recognition.  He roamed through these things, not brave enough to really _think_ about any of it but too weak to stop himself from wandering and wondering.  And Natasha.  He thought losing Peggy had been painful.  That was nothing compared to this.  He kept telling himself that he hadn’t lost Nat, that she was still with him, still _there_ , probably as desperate as he was to find a way past this.  He was afraid that maybe there wasn’t one.  Their relationship had been built on trust.  As crazy and inexplicable as that sounded, it was true.  That night in his apartment when she’d come back to him, she’d been so honest with him, so open and pure, and ever since then he’d knew she’d never lied to him.  She’d trusted him with her heart, and he’d been honored by that, so much so, because he knew what it had taken for her to be so vulnerable.  And with one lie – not even a lie, for God’s sake, but a choice to not speak the truth – all of that was in danger.

How could he trust her now?  He’d needed to know the truth about Bucky.  She had had an obligation to tell him.  God, if he’d known…

What could he have done?

_Nothing._

But that didn’t matter.  And that wasn’t even the worst of it.  _“I slept with him.”_ The words twisted around his thoughts, hooking in deep with poisonous barbs.  _“I slept with him.”_   Again, he _knew_ what he was feeling wasn’t rational.  It had happened so many years ago.  How could he punish her for that?  How could he hate her for it?  But a small part of him did.  Bucky was his best friend.  _The man she slept with…  That wasn’t Bucky._   Or was it?  How the hell would he ever know?  He felt like she’d cheated on him – _that’s so damn pathetic and you’re so damn insecure for feeling it_ – and the betrayal burned.  How was he supposed to get past this?  Trust her again?  Let things be as simple and sweet as they had been?  He loved her.  That hadn’t stopped, would _never_ stop, so this hurt in a way that went deep, throbbing like a wound that wasn’t healing.  It hurt so badly.

Steve released a long breath, staring out over the New York skyline.  The city was calm below, busy with a pleasant summer afternoon.  Peaceful and calm and completely unaware of the danger looming before it.  He thought about those lazy days back in DC he’d spent with Natasha.  Wonderful days.  Among the happiest of his life, and certainly the happiest he’d had since waking up seventy years in the future.  But there’d been storm clouds on the horizon.  Bad ones.  Thick and dark and violent, building and growing and creeping ominously closer.  He’d known they were there.  They both had.  And they’d turned a blind eye, because SHIELD couldn’t be this evil they feared it was.  Because they hadn’t _wanted to see_ , at least nothing beyond each other.  And this time it had been his past that had come back to torment them.  Ghosts that had driven between them.  Hurt them.  Split them apart.

_God, help me._

“Hey.”  Steve turned and found Sam stepping through the doors that led into his suite.  The other man walked across the balcony, passing the expensive furniture and a meal that lay untouched upon it.  He came to stand right beside Steve, leaning his forearms on the railing of the balcony and gazing over the city.  They were quiet for a little while before Sam glanced at him out of the corner of his eye.  “You ready for this?”

Steve gave a short breath.  He couldn’t lie.  He still was not nor would he _ever_ be very good at it.  “I don’t know.”

“Me neither,” Sam replied.  “But I know I need a clear head to do what needs to be done.  Whatever’s, uh…”  He faltered, like he was trying to find the best way to say something that needed to be said.  “Whatever happened between you and Natasha, you need to let it go now.”

“That obvious, huh,” Steve murmured.

“Pretty much.”  Sam paused again, probably trying to gauge whether or not to press deeper.  “Do you want to talk about it?”

“Not really, no.”

“Might be good to air it out.”

Steve managed half a weak grin.  “Rather than stuffing it into my man-purse?”

Sam chuckled good-naturedly.  “Yeah.”

He didn’t know how to explain it.  “She lied to me.”

Sam nodded as if he’d expected that, his grin slipping as he slumped a little and leaned more of his weight into the railing.  “Seems to me that’s what she does.  What she knows.”

He realized that.  He had told Natasha that he loved her for everything she was, that he _knew_ her and wasn’t put off by Black Widow and what Black Widow had done.  The violence and murders.  Sex and deception.  That was who she was, what she had been made into, and it had never bothered him before because he’d seen past it.  She was so strong and beautiful and fiery, stubbornly loyal and smarter than he would ever be.  She was _better_ than Black Widow.

But then the lies were there.  He couldn’t just wish them away.  The lies she’d told on behalf of SHIELD.  The lies she’d told him in Crimea.  She’d used him, manipulated him.  Who was to say she wasn’t still doing it?  _That’s what she knows._

“Whatever she did, she did for you.  She loves you, man.  You didn’t see her.  She would have done anything to save you.”  Sam was nothing but sincere.  And that only made it worse.  It was betrayal upon betrayal, so much of it, layers and layers of it, and he knew a great deal of how he was feeling was rooted in just the trauma of what he’d endured.  To have suffered through so much for Natasha’s sake only to come back to her and learn what he had learned…  But he couldn’t parse the paranoia and the pain from reality.  And he _did_ know what she had done to save him.  What she had sacrificed.  He was torn by it, as much as he was torn by everything else.  He’d never wanted her to trade the world for his life.  So he said nothing.  _Ignore it.  Face it later._

They stared out over the city again.  They were wasting time.  Maybe that was okay, just for a bit.

“He’s gonna be there, you know.”

Sam’s sullen declaration cut through the quiet.  He wasn’t specific as to whom he was referring, but Steve knew.  He sighed softly.  “I know.”

Sam straightened and stuffed his hands into the pockets of his jeans.  “Look, whoever he used to be…”  He shook his head.  “The guy he is now…  I don’t think he’s the kind you save.  He’s the kind you stop.”

Hearing that hurt, too.  One more thing torturing him.  One more blow.  He wasn’t going to go down.  When the anguish was peeled away, this was the one thing he knew.  The one thing he’d known his whole life.  _Even when I had nothing, I had Bucky._   “I don’t know if I can do that.”

Sam was practical about it, more so than Steve could manage.  Bucky had always said he was damn stubborn.  “He might not give you a choice.  He doesn’t know you.”

There was heat now.  At long last.  Burning inside him.  Slow at first, smoldering and scrounging for strength.  “I got through to him once,” he said, turning to face Sam finally.  “I can do it again.”

Sam didn’t look convinced.  Steve didn’t need him to be.  _He_ was sure.  The memory of the Winter Soldier’s eyes as they softened with the glint of understanding, of recognition, of _Bucky_ underneath all of the torment and torture and reprogramming…  That was all he could see now, and he could get that back.  He could bring Bucky out of the machine.  He could save him.

Even if Sam wasn’t sure Steve could save Bucky, he had faith in Steve.  He clasped him on the shoulder.  “I’m with you, no matter what.”

Steve smiled faintly, but it was a true smile.  He nodded.  “I know.”  They stood a moment more, gathering their strength and courage in this proverbial calm before the storm, before Steve turned away.  His blood was running warm now, and he felt certain.  _Ready._ He needed to pull himself back to his feet and keep fighting.  He was Captain America, and that was what he did.  It didn’t matter how hurt he was, how low he was.  How bitter or betrayed or angry.  He was going to get back up and finish this.  “Gear up,” he said.  “It’s time.”

Sam watched him limp away.  With every step, it was less noticeable and Steve stood straighter and stronger again.  “You gonna wear that?” he asked with half a laugh in his voice.

“No,” Steve said as he reached the doors to his suite.  “If you’re gonna fight a war, you gotta wear a uniform.  Let’s hope Stark has one I can use.”  He grunted a chuckle to himself.  _And let’s hope it doesn’t have tights._

* * *

A half an hour later, Steve stood alone in the war room.  It was dark with long, still afternoon shadows, dark and quiet.  He stood in front of the equipment display.  He’d previously thought it only contained iterations of Iron Man suits, but that wasn’t the case.  Tony did indeed have a uniform for him.  The inventor had been there a moment before, babbling about the plans he’d had for the Avengers before the team had been unofficially abandoned.  Apparently this, too, he’d gone ahead with, designing and constructing and crafting a future for Earth’s mightiest heroes even as SHIELD turned its back on them.  He led Steve to a rear area where a brand new Captain America uniform was waiting.  It harkened back his original one, the one from World War II now safely on display in the Smithsonian.  The new design was lightweight but form-fitting and utilitarian.  This was sleeker and more modern than the one put together seventy years ago by Howard Stark.  The blue was darker, and the stripes across his midriff were angular.  It was trimmed in silver and red and composed of a Kevlar mesh, strong but flexible.  Tony looked proud of himself at Steve’s grateful expression, and he’d left to allow Steve a moment to change.

Steve swept his hands over the shoulders of the suit where it stood upon the mannequin.  It was comforting to see the past updated, comforting in a way he hadn’t expected.  Every suit he’d worn on behalf of SHIELD, from the getup he’d uncomfortably donned to fight the Chitauri to the stealth uniform he’d had of late, had never felt entirely like _him_.  It was always with a different purpose, a second skin hiding who he was behind SHIELD’s agenda.  What Stark had made was his past married with his present, a testament to where he had come from while embracing who he was today.  Reverently he slipped his thumb down the silver star on the chest, feeling calm for the first time since Fury had sent him on his disastrous mission to Algiers.  And suddenly all the pain faded.  His wounds would heal.  That warmth spreading through his body turned hot and powerful.  He could forget the scars on his spirit for a bit and get the job done.  He really could ignore his bleeding heart.  Of course he could.  He was Captain America.

He didn’t know if it was the damage done to his brain by HYDRA’s machine or if it was the product of all of this nightmarish hell, but as he dressed he couldn’t stop remembering.  The first time he’d put on the suit, Bucky at his side trying not to laugh but simultaneously so proud that he was trying not to cry.  Peggy’s loving smile, watching him prepare for a difficult battle with knowing, worried eyes.  Dressing in the new uniform Phil Coulson had designed for him, the future vast and weird and terrifying all around him as he tried to pull himself together to go out and fight a god.  Natasha, leaning against the row of lockers in the locker room of the helicarrier as she flirted with him and watched him pull his STRIKE suit on.  Her presence was so _real_ to him that once or twice he glanced around this dark, little alcove within the Tower, feeling the power of her eyes devouring his body, vividly _knowing_ she was there.  She wasn’t.  Stiff and hurt as he was, he was also reminded of those long moments in Crimea when he’d struggled back to his feet, fighting for every inch as he’d dressed to go out and lead the STRIKE Team to stop a madman and his monster.  This wasn’t so different.  Different madman.  Different monster.

He’d stopped the Red Guardian, but he hadn’t been able to save him.  He would stop Bucky.  And he _would_ save him.

When he was finished, the uniform felt _good_ on his body.  Real and true.  He was still bruised and broken.  He could fight on his damaged leg, he thought, but it wouldn’t be easy.  And his belly, chest, and back were pretty tender.  Still, he was stronger than his injuries, stronger than all the damage done to him.  Stronger than the Winter Soldier.  He was going to stop Project: Insight.  And he was going to bury HYDRA once and for all.

Steve grabbed his helmet.  He walked back out into the war room, noting that the latest Iron Man suit was gone.  Everything was ready, ready for their final stand against the traitors who’d torn them down and threatened their world.  His shield was propped against the conference table; obviously Tony had brought it down for him.  As he walked to retrieve it, that fleeting sensation of being watched ghosted over his skin again, and he looked to the door.

Natasha was there.  She’d come back to him.  _She’d come to him._   Relief poured over him, and he stopped midstride.  She was dressed in a black leather suit that clung to her body like a second skin.  It was trimmed in blue, the Avengers logo as proud on her shoulders as it was on Steve’s.  Her hair turned copper and rust in the sunlight, and her skin was ivory.  Blue eyes watched every move he made, dark and empty.  He held her gaze for a moment, so hurt and afraid that he could barely fight off the urge to run to her and sweep her against him and kiss her senseless.  He wanted to be with her.  He wanted her to come to him and apologize.  He was hers, and she was his, and this wasn’t the way things were supposed to be.  A million thoughts raced through his mind.  Things he wanted to say.  Things he _needed_ to say before they parted ways for this mission.  _How could you lie to me?  How could you sleep with him?  Don’t do this.  Don’t go.  It’s too dangerous.  You sold our future for nothing.  I can’t let you go.  Please don’t leave me.  Please be careful.  Please forgive me.  I forgive you.  We can work this out.  When this is over, I want only you.  I love you.  I need you.  I–_

He swallowed the painful knot lodged in his throat and bent to grab his shield.  He resolved to do it, to go back to her now, to make this right because it _needed_ to be right, but he couldn’t.  He couldn’t because when he looked again she disappeared like a passing shadow that had never been there at all.  She was gone, and he was alone.


	16. Chapter 16

Contrary to popular opinion, Clint was not a fan of sneaking around in vents.  The ones in the Triskelion were bigger and cleaner than most he’d been in before, but that didn’t make crawling through them any more comfortable or convenient.  He scooted and slid forward to a particularly narrow junction, pausing at the end of it to glance around.  His sense of direction was normally quite good, but everything in here was completely nondescript, even more so than the Triskelion’s interior.  “Which way?” he whispered to Sharon.

“Left,” she returned quietly, checking the maps on the tablet she carried.

Clint nodded, gritting his teeth before heading down the way she indicated.  So far their infiltration of the Triskelion had gone remarkably well, all things considering.  Slipping in had been the hardest part; his face was well known around SHIELD, and he was probably near the top of HYDRA’s hit list at this point.  But Hill had managed to sneak a few of SHIELD’s better gadgets out of the Triskelion before she’d fled, one of which being the holographic facial mesh.  They had two working copies of it, and Clint had gotten through the doors and lobby wearing one.  They hadn’t had the time to carefully program the mesh, but the mask had changed his facial features enough so that he didn’t look like himself, and that was essentially all he needed.  Sharon had been more of a risk, because they couldn’t spare the second mesh for her.  Still, it had only been for a few minutes, entering the building, crossing the lobby where Pierce had been greeting the World Security Council as its members arrived for the launch as expected, finding an empty corridor deeper on the vacant archives floor, and sneaking up into the ventilation system.  The contact Hill and Carter had in IT had disabled the biometric scanners along their route.  If anyone looked twice, the hack was probably evident, but hopefully this would go down fast enough that no one would notice.

They crawled quickly through the vents in silence with rushed, soft breaths and lightly pounding hearts.  They still had two hours until the launch, but it certainly felt like there wasn’t a second to spare.  Clint glanced over his shoulder at Carter again, and she gestured to the right at the next fork in their road.  There was a loud, whirring noise ahead, the fans of an air recycler in all likelihood.  Crawling forward a little further, he saw his conclusion was correct.  The massive blades were below them and covered in a shield, but the metal was thin and he didn’t know if that would support their weight.  Clint hopped carefully down into the well, stepping around on light feet to test the shield’s strength and found it good enough.  He reached back to help Sharon down the slight drop, but she was already with him, lithely darting across the grating to the next shaft on the other side.  He followed, his gear rattling as he did.  “Up,” Sharon said as he came to her.  The shaft above them went vertical about ten feet, and there was a ledge where the next part headed deeper inside.  “There.”

Clint cupped his hands, and Sharon set her boot into them.  With a grunt of effort, he lifted her.  She grabbed the ledge and hauled herself up with ease.  Then she reached down with gloved hands for him and helped him pull himself up.  The treads on his boots squeaked loudly against the smooth, steel surface of the shaft, but with the noise from the fans it wasn’t likely anyone heard it.  Once up, he quickly looked around.  “Operations control is down there,” Sharon whispered, gesturing to the end of the shaft.  “Drop down.  It’ll put us right outside in the corridor.”

Clint pulled his gun from his hip holster.  The end of the shaft, where the vent was over the corridor, seemed dizzyingly far away.  It was covered in darkness save for where light was shooting through the slats of the vent.  He hesitated, gathering up his composure with a deep breath, and crawled closer.  When he was over the vent, he reached into his combat vest, making sure to keep out of the beams of illumination slicing through the shadows.  He pulled a screwdriver and tested the grate to see how firm it was.  Nothing he couldn’t break through.  He looked to Carter.  “Ready?” he whispered.

She nodded.  “Ready.”

Clint raised his wrist to his mouth.  “We’re in position.”

A moment later, Hill’s calm voice answered back, a low murmur in their ears.  “Copy that.  Stark?”

“Good to go,” came Stark’s response.

“Alright.  Patching in now.”

Clint held Sharon’s eyes, waiting for the next endless minute while Hill, hundreds of feet away from them in the Crow’s Nest of the Triskelion, worked on hacking into the SHIELD’s PA system.  The Crow’s Nest was located in one of the auxiliary buildings, and it was where the flight controllers and telecom specialists worked to maintain a constant surveillance of the traffic, physical and electronic, coming into and out of SHIELD Headquarters.  This would never work without securing it.

And their plan was never going to succeed unless they showed those inside SHIELD for whom they were truly working.

Finally, after what seemed like a ridiculously long delay, the PA system came to life, and Rogers’ calm, steady voice echoed below them, around them, and all through the Triskelion.  “Attention all SHIELD agents.  This is Steve Rogers.”

That was their cue.  Clint kicked the vent with all of his strength, and it bent and came loose with a bang.  It fell into the darkened corridor below.  He was slipping down a second later, holding his gun in front of him.  Carter followed.  Sure enough, this path had deposited them right outside of operations control in one of the hallways that connected to a series of offices.  Both the offices and the corridor were thankfully empty with everyone in the main room for the launch.  Dozens of agents were watching the massive screen, which displayed a huge timer counting down the seconds until the launch as well as status reports and other relevant data.  No one really noticed their infiltration, not with Steve’s voice booming all over SHIELD.  “You’ve heard a lot about me over the last few days.  Some of you were ordered to hunt me down.  Some of you saw me when I was taken prisoner.  Some of you believed what you were told and thought I was betraying SHIELD.  But I think it’s time you know the truth.”

Clint watched through the glass doors as techs and agents looked around at each other in surprise.  Carter was close beside him.  He crouched beside the door, holstering his gun and reaching for his bow.  He tapped a control on the grip, fitting one of his arrows with a particular head that had been suggested by him and quickly designed by Stark.  They were outnumbered nearly twenty to one.  Hopefully Steve would be able to sway those odds to their favor.  Hopefully.  “SHIELD is not what we thought it was.  It’s been taken over by HYDRA.”

A hushed murmur of shock and dissension went through the group in the room beyond.  Clint fitted the arrow to his bow.  “Alexander Pierce is their leader.  The STRIKE and Insight crew are HYDRA as well.  I don’t know how many more, but I know they’re in the building.  They could be standing right next to you.”  That murmur blossomed into outright fear, people rising from their desks and looking around suspiciously.  Warily.  Clint prayed that meant most of the agents in front of them were on their side.  _Hopefully._   Steve went on.  “They almost have what they want.  Absolute control.  Control over you.  Control over the world.  They shot Nick Fury.  And it won’t end there.”  The tension was rising.  Higher and higher.  Clint waited, although it was hard to make himself stay still.  Not with the timer counting down.  “If you launch those helicarriers today, HYDRA will be able to kill _anyone_ that stands in their way.  Unless we stop them.”

Inside everyone was even more uncertain, the tension escalating.  It was almost as if Steve could see it or sense it even though he was hundreds of feet away at Hill’s side.  His cool, confident voice came back.  Compassionate, even.  _Understanding._ “I know I’m asking a lot.  But the price of freedom is high.  It always has been.  And it’s a price I’m willing to pay.”  Clint drew a deep breath, knowing more than ever how true that was.  How much Steve had paid, back in his time and just recently.  How much Natasha had and Fury had.  How much he had.  “If I’m the only one, then so be it.  But I’m willing to bet I’m not.”

“Barton,” Carter hissed.  Rumlow and a few others of the STRIKE Team were stalking into the room before them from the other side.  Rumlow’s bruised face was wrathful, his eyes narrowed and his jaw clenched as he headed right along the row of consoles toward a young guy with curly brown hair.  Carter stiffened next to him.  It was a leap of reasoning, but Clint figured this kid might be their contact in IT.  He was certainly in a position to have and control eyes and ears on everything.  _Shit._

“Preempt the launch sequence,” Rumlow ordered, standing, looming over the kid’s shoulder.  He paled instantly, horrified like he couldn’t believe he’d gotten himself into this trouble.  Rumlow’s glare hardened with impatience.  “Override it.  Get those ships in the air.  Now.”

“Barton,” Carter hissed again.  She had her gun out now as well, poised beside him, anxiously waiting to strike.  Clint hesitated anew, not at all interested in starting a firefight in the control room.  If he could get a clear shot across the room to the servers, his arrow should shut them down long enough to disrupt the launch.  But he would need to be in the room for that.  Their hope had been that enough of the agents would come to their side to never need to attack, to stop the launch before it even started.  So much for that.  With Rumlow and half the STRIKE Team now in the room, a fight was all but unavoidable.

“Is there a problem?” Rumlow asked, staring coolly down at the IT tech.  The kid was flustered, trembling, nearly coming apart in fear.  He didn’t move, didn’t do anything to follow Rumlow’s orders.  He didn’t answer.  Clint saw something flash in Rumlow’s eyes.  He knew it well.  That hint of cruel anticipation, the sadistic kick he got out of hurting and threatening other people.  He’d seen it when Rumlow had been torturing Rogers.  And he knew it meant they had to do something.  _“Is there a problem?”_

“N-no, sir.  I’m sorry.”

“Then get those ships in the air.  _Now._ ”

Nobody else in the room moved.  _Nobody._   Clint gritted his teeth.  There was no more time to spare.  The help he’d hoped they’d get wasn’t coming, and if they stayed outside too much longer, they were going to be discovered.  The kid in front of Rumlow winced perpetually, every set of eyes in operations control fixed on him.  Waiting.  Watching to see what he would do.  He sucked in a shaking breath, shivering to beat the band with tears welling in his eyes, but he shook his head.  “I can’t.  I’m not launching those ships.”  He pushed his keyboard away, his chair rolling back slightly.  “Captain’s orders.”

Clint couldn’t help but be a little proud at that, that there was still some _good_ in SHIELD, but he didn’t have long to appreciate it.  Rumlow pulled his gun and jabbed it into the young man’s temple.  “Launch the goddamn ships,” he snarled.

That was it.  Clint burst into the room, bow aimed at Rumlow.  Sharon followed him.

And all hell broke loose.

* * *

“You smug son of a bitch,” Councilman Rockwell lowly said, turning to face Pierce.

For his own part, Pierce seemed cool, unbothered by Captain America’s speech that had revealed his lies to SHIELD.  Natasha watched from behind her mask, playing it equally cool.  Pierce had been in the middle of dispensing celebratory champagne to his supposed colleagues when Steve’s speech had blasted through the World Security Council chamber, loud and powerful.  And the horrified, betrayed looks on the councilmember’s faces had been all she needed to know they weren’t part of HYDRA’s plot.  Maybe they’d been aware something wasn’t right, like a niggling whisper in the backs of their minds.  Maybe they simply trusted Steve’s word, believing an explanation for recent events from a man exalted worldwide as an icon and a hero.  Whatever it was, she was heartened somewhat to know not everything was corrupt.  Still, while this perhaps ( _perhaps_ ) evened the odds against her, it also meant she now had to protect them.  She was sure that Pierce wouldn’t have brought the most powerful men and woman in the world into his lair without a way to keep them there.

Sure enough, a half a dozen members of the STRIKE Team led by Ramirez casually strolled into the meeting.  Natasha glanced at them, at their hard scowls and vicious eyes, and saw the damage they’d done to Steve.  The damage they’d done to _everyone_.  It took a hidden breath, as deep as she could manage, to hold onto her temper.  And Pierce…  She was going to kill him for the pain he’d caused.  The bastard had cost her _everything._

Councilman Singh looked at the approaching soldiers in relief.  However, that quickly disappeared from his face when he realized the soldiers weren’t making any move to take Pierce into custody.  “Arrest him,” he prompted.

Ramirez pulled a gun and pointed it right at the stunned councilmen.  Natasha played her part, letting loose a small gasp and raising her hands.  Councilman Yen shook his head.  “What is the meaning of this?  Arrest him!”

The STRIKE officers made no move to follow the council’s demands.  Pierce arrogantly tipped his head.  “I guess I’ve got the floor.”  He set his hands to his hips and nodded to Ramirez.  “Send the order out again.”

Ramirez lifted the collar of his combat vest to his mouth, the gun never wavering as he aimed it at the councilmen.  “Launch the helicarriers,” he said evenly, staring so hard at Natasha that she couldn’t help but worry that he was somehow recognizing her underneath her disguise.  She was far too much of a professional to betray her doubts, not even for a second.  And once that momentary lurch of fear was out of her system, the words he’d relayed to the rest of his team sunk into her brain like a load of ice.  They’d expected the order to launch, of course, and planned for it, but things got infinitely more difficult and dangerous with Project: Insight in the air.

And the helicarriers launching meant Steve would be fighting.

It was damn hard to stay still knowing that.  No matter how angry she was with Clint, she prayed whole-heartedly that he could do something to stop this.

Pierce watched the assembled council with a feral glint in his eye, as though he was looking forward to this.  His arrogance knew no bounds.  Natasha wanted to _murder_ him.  He walked to the table, taking one of the champagne flutes.  He offered one to Natasha.  She stared at him, trying not to seem quite so cold and furious.  “Take it, Councilwoman,” he commanded softly, almost politely, and she did.  He offered another to Councilmen Singh, who refused to receive it, shifting his enraged glare from Ramirez and the gun pointed right at him and Pierce.  Pierce had the audacity to look surprised.  “I don’t know why you’re all so alarmed.  This is the future.  This is what we wanted, what we _all_ wanted, what we’ve worked so hard for.”

 “This is not what we wanted,” Singh declared angrily.  “This is why you had Nick Fury killed, why you branded him and Captain Rogers as traitors.  You lying bastard.  We should have called for your resignation when we could have.”

Pierce took a sip from his glass.  “Do you honestly think that would have stopped me?”  He offered the other to Singh again, insistently.  “This didn’t start with Nick Fury’s assassination or Project: Insight’s inception or the Avengers Initiative.  This didn’t even start with SHIELD.  This goes much further back, back to when one man envisioned a world without the chaos of freedom weighing humanity down.  A world under total control.  Our control, the _right_ control.  Mankind relieved of its own weaknesses through complete submission.  A world full of stability instead of anarchy.  That has always been HYDRA’s goal.  Not so different from your own, really.”  Pierce tipped his head as Singh finally accepted the drink.  “You wanted a way to ensure peace, to protect order from chaos.  That’s what I delivered.  We only have to act now, and terrorists, dictators, madmen and maniacs…  We could wipe them off the map before they can do any damage.  You say this isn’t what you wanted, but I delivered _exactly_ what you asked for.  The weapon that _you_ wished for.  Don’t tell me you don’t want to pull the trigger.”

“Not if it’s your trigger,” Singh seethed.  He threw his flute clear across the empty council chamber.  It struck the polished floors with a loud, echoing crash, glass shattering and tinkling as it spread all over.  “You’re not getting away with this, Pierce.”

Pierce’s mouth turned up into a knowing grin.  “There’s no one here to stop me.”

“Captain America’s here,” Rockwell declared, taking one tentative step closer to stand at Singh’s left.

Pierce grunted a little amused chuckle.  “Captain America, huh.”  Natasha turned a little, lowering her hands slowly, tightening her grip on her glass of champagne.  She shook her right arm ever so slightly, and two taser disks slid inconspicuously down into her palm.  “Gentlemen, I don’t know if you realize this, but we brought Captain America to his knees.  We broke him, whittled away the man and left hardly anything behind.  Physically.  _Mentally_.  If he’s here to fight, he’s going to die.  Make no mistake.”  Natasha forced herself to remain motionless.  She needed patience now.  And strength.  Courage.  All the things she’d learned from Steve.  Rockwell lifted his chin, sharing a glance with Yen and Singh.  The look was laden with doubt and fear.  “Rogers tried to stop us once.  Need I remind you that he died back then, too, and here we still are today.  Cheers.”  He tipped his glass in a toast.

The room was silent for a moment.  Pierce drained the rest of his champagne before setting the flute back to the table.  “Alright, my friends.  This is it.  Your chance to either join us or be against us.  This is the start of HYDRA’s new world order!”  He was genuinely excited, proud of himself and so pleased that things were going so well.  The smile on his face was disgusting, a full-blown version of every cunning, slightly villainous smirk Natasha had ever seen him wear.  He put his hands on his hips.  “So you better decide now which side of it you want to be on.”  That was far more of a threat than a recommendation.  The councilmembers, held at gunpoint, hesitated, glancing among each other.  Ramirez came closer, his handgun still and steady.  Then he handed it to Pierce.  The Secretary did seem to enjoy getting his hands dirty, disturbingly enough.  He took the gun and turned back to Singh.  “What will it be?  Are you with HYDRA or against us?”  Natasha waited a second.  A second more.

And then she attacked.

She moved fast, knowing she had the element of surprise on her side.  She kicked Singh in the hip to get him out of the way of the gun before throwing her champagne glass in the face of Ramirez.  She grabbed Pierce’s arm and twisted; as she suspected, the old man wasn’t ready for her strike, and he howled, easily dropping the gun.  She whirled, keeping contact with Pierce, and flung one disk at each of the other soldiers.  They went down, shocked into unconsciousness immediately on impact.  Trading her weight to her other leg, she threw Pierce bodily to the floor, taking just a moment to enjoy his shout of pain.  The remaining two soldiers were floundering to get their weapons up, but she was quicker than them, so much so.  She kicked one, and he fell back.  The other she grabbed around the neck and slammed his head into the table hard enough to crack it.  She spun, landing another fierce kick into Ramirez’s jaw.  The STRIKE agent stumbled with a gush of blood, and her high heel cutting across his face, before dropping to the floor.

The whole thing was over in a matter of seconds.  With her enemies moaning and bleeding on the floor around her, she crouched, never taking her eyes off Pierce, and scooped up the gun the Secretary had dropped.  She pointed it at him as he staggered to his feet, his eyes narrowed in barely restrained anger.  Her own hatred was at a fever pitch.  She had the son of a bitch right where she wanted him now.  The image of Steve, bound and gagged on his knees with Rumlow _hurting_ him danced in the back of her mind.  “Oh, I’m sorry,” she said lowly, menacingly.  She reached up, tapped her temple to disengage the mask, and pulled the holographic mesh from her face and the wig from her head.  Once she peeled away the visage of Councilwoman Hawley, the cold countenance of Black Widow stared down her prey.  Her eyes were hard as steel and as sharp as razors, and she stalked closer, hating and _hating_.  “Did I ruin your moment?”

* * *

Operations control was at a stand-off.  A large one.  The STRIKE team and allied soldiers had their rifles raised, pointed at the SHIELD agents who’d been brave enough to draw their own side-arms and aim back.  The room was ridiculously silent, quiet enough to hear the proverbial pin drop, and Clint stood stock still, his arm powerfully drawn back on his bow.  The tip of his arrow was directly settled on Rumlow’s face.  It had a blunted end because of the specially designed tip, but he was pretty damn sure he could still do some damage with it.

“Well, look here,” Rumlow sneered, pressing the barrel of his gun deeper into the IT tech’s head.  “The bird’s come back to his nest.”

“Drop the gun,” Clint warned.  “Drop it now.”

“No chance, Barton,” Rumlow returned.  “So you and Rogers and your little team came back to play at being heroes.  Big fucking deal.  Those ships are going up.”

Clint narrowed his eyes.  “Like hell they are.”

“Oh, Jesus,” the kid moaned, squeezing his eyes shut and raising his hands in submission.

“Let him go and back away,” Clint ordered coolly.

Rumlow glanced to Carter.  “You two picked the wrong side,” he remarked casually, but it was all a farce.  There was anger and frustration and even dismay in his voice.

Sharon cocked an eyebrow and stepped closer, her slight form steady and her aim unwavering.  The muzzle of her gun was practically jabbing into Rumlow’s temple.  “Depends on where you’re standing,” she answered coolly.

Rumlow stared at them both a moment more, at Clint’s bow and Sharon’s gun trained on him.  He looked again to the IT Tech, who was still quivering in absolute terror.  The computer screens in front of them were poised for the launch, the timer still counting down.  The tension in the room was palpable, thick and almost suffocating.  Then Rumlow finally lowered his gun, dropping his arm to the side.  Clint inched forward, suspicion hot in his gaze and doubt coiling in his belly.  Rumlow’s gun slipped from his suddenly slack fingers, clattering loudly to the floor.  The IT guy jerked, daring to open his eyes and glance over his shoulder.  It seemed for an incredible moment like HYDRA was surrendering.

Clint knew better.

That was probably what saved his life.  Rumlow drew a combat knife from a sheath along his trouser leg like lightning, stabbing at him.  Clint backpedaled, unable to take the shot so close, and the knife cut along his arm.  He winced, dropping to the floor.  A cacophony of gunfire filled the room, and screens shattered along the desks.  Clint scrambled, barely avoiding the swipe of the long blade as Rumlow rounded on him.  Pain exploded in his side, and for a moment he couldn’t make much sense of why.  As he was falling, he realized he’d been shot, hit by a wayward bullet maybe.  He ended up on his ass, clambering away, trying to get a hand to his flank to keep the blood in his body.  Rumlow was bearing down on him, and Clint barely got his bow up in time to block the knife careening toward him.  He kicked out savagely and caught Rumlow in the chest.  Rumlow staggered back, and Clint gritted his teeth, rolling to his side and scrambling for the arrow he’d dropped.

The roar of the fight was deafening.  Guns were firing, bullets smashing into the workstations and computer monitors.  One shattered above Clint’s head as he rolled, his bloody fingers flailing for the arrow that had slipped under the row of the desks.  _Damn it.  Damn it!  Where is it?_   Someone screamed.  The IT Tech was on the floor next to him, covering his head with his hands.  “Get out of here!” Clint cried.  His fingers finally brushed against the fletching of the arrow, and he curled his hand around it and pulled it free.  Ignoring the pain rushing up and down his side – _shit, I’m bleeding bad_ – he rose, fit the arrow to his bow, and took aim for the servers.

“Put it down!” Rumlow ordered.  In the chaos, the bastard was easy to find.  He was still in front of the young man’s computer, only he had Carter.  His hand was tangled in the mess of her honeyed hair tightly, and his bloody knife was poking into the soft, vulnerable flesh of her neck under her chin.  The world came to a standstill again.  The agents and STRIKE soldiers still alive stopped their fight, shouts dying and screams fading.  Rumlow gave a small shake of his head.  “Put it down, Barton, or I swear I’ll cut her fucking throat.”

Sharon’s eyes narrowed.  Every inch of her body was tense, and she had her hands clenched around Rumlow’s fist in her hair.  But she shook her head, her gaze firm and certain on Clint’s.  Rumlow’s eyes flashed.  “You know I’ll do it.”

“I know you’re a goddamn monster,” Clint responded hoarsely.  “And I know I’m going to _end_ you.”

Rumlow drew the tip of the knife lightly across Sharon’s neck.  It was so sharp that that gentle slice was enough to draw blood.  “Don’t test me.  Put it down.”  Fury rushed over Clint, fury taut and torturous.  He darted his gaze between Rumlow’s threatening, sadistic eyes and Carter’s, searching for a way out of this.  There wasn’t one.  He already had enough blood on his hands.  _No more._   He dropped his bow.

Rumlow smiled in feral glee.  His face was bathed in sweat.  “You’re going to die,” he promised Clint.  “Painfully.  I’m going to fucking take you apart.”  His hard glare shifted to the IT guy still cowering on the floor.  “You.  Get your ass back in this chair and preempt the launch sequence.  Now.  I’m not asking again!”

The young man met Sharon’s apologetic gaze, tears building in his own eyes as he scrambled up onto his knees and crawled back to his chair.  He planted himself in it, shaking so hard he nearly rattled the remains of his desk.  His computer terminal was somehow still intact, though those adjacent had bullet holes punched through their displays and keyboards.  The kid’s fingers flew as he worked.  Clint watched in mounting dismay, so goddamn helpless and trembling himself in frustration and pain.  A moment later, the young man was done.  All it had taken was a few commands, and the countdown timer disappeared, blanketed instead by huge, orange letters that warned “OVERRIDE”. Clint’s heart thundered in his chest.  He had to stop this.  _He had to._

_How?_

Thankfully, Sharon knew how.  She used Rumlow’s split second of relief to twist herself, slamming her right elbow down into his midriff with enough force to knock the air from him.  She got her fingers around the wrist holding the knife and pushed back, crying out in pain and effort.  Clint couldn’t spare the moment to see if she was okay.  He ducked, another of the STRIKE Team shooting at him, and drew his gun again.  One shot dropped his assailant.  He scooped up his bow, the wayward arrow, and launched it directly at the servers.

His shot struck.  The arrowhead dug into the smooth, steel surface of the server rack.  Three anchors extended from it, latching into the metal and holding tight.  A second later, everything shut down.  Computers.  Lights.  _Everything._

Clint pointed his gun at the struggle going on before him, but there was no way to take a shot in the darkness and with Sharon tangled up in her captor’s embrace.  He launched himself forward, tracing the faint outline of Rumlow as he grappled with Carter.  He tackled the other man, driving all three of them into the desk behind them.  In the dark red of the emergency lights, he saw the blade slash at him.  Clint caught it, grabbing Rumlow’s wrist and squeezing over Carter’s, and together they slammed the STRIKE commander’s hand into the edge of the desk.  It took three hits to force him to drop the knife.  Rumlow growled, shoving Sharon into Clint and sending them both down to the floor.

The lights came back on with a loud whine.  Everything powered back up instantly, computers rebooting and systems restoring.  Clint blinked the blurriness from his eyes, quickly regaining his bearings.  Sharon was crumpled up against him, their limbs tangled together.  She was wide-eyed, bleeding from her shoulder.  “Clint–”

“Are you okay?” he gasped.  She nodded shakily, and Clint climbed painfully to his feet, looking around frantically.

Rumlow was gone.

_Shit._

Clint raised his wrist to his mouth.  “Hill!  Hill, come in!  We’ve lost Rumlow!  Are the helicarriers launching?  Hill!”  There was no response.  Had the power disruption somehow knocked out their communications?  _Shit!_   “Hill!  Respond, damn it!”

Nothing.  Clint growled, grabbing his gun and his bow and struggling to his feet.  His side exploded in agony, the warmth of blood spreading up and down his combat vest, plastering his black t-shirt to his chest.  “Sound for evacuation.  Get everybody out,” he ordered to Sharon, who was watching him like he was crazy.  Maybe he was.  “Everybody!”

“Barton, you’re bleeding!  Just wait!”

But Clint was already running.

* * *

Steve watched in dismay as the Potomac River started to shift, the brown and gray waves thinning and spreading over something that was emerging from beneath them.  An alarm klaxon started to wail from inside the Triskelion behind them, piercing the quiet of the late afternoon.  Below them the river opened, and two sets of humongous doors began to appear underneath the disappearing layer of water on top of them.  The ground rumbled, the whir of huge machines vibrating everything around them.  The doors began to split down their middles, the two halves angling upwards and parting to unveil the flight decks of the Insight helicarriers beneath them.  The doors were retracting quickly, opening the Insight Bay to the sky.  Moorings and gangways were pulled away.  The ground grumbled again as the engines on the carriers ignited with a burst of bright blue, thrumming with power as they lifted the gigantic ships upward.  Project: Insight was launching.  _Project: Insight was launching._

“Shit,” Sam breathed beside him.

Steve drew a deep breath to steady himself.  “Maria,” he said into his wrist communicator, “two of the carriers are going up, but there’s no sign of the third.  Can you confirm?”

There was no answer for a tremendously long second, the two men standing in the flight yard and watching awestruck as the massive ships ascended.  Then a crackle of static burst in their ears.  “–ry.  Barton’s EMP must’ve screwed with our comms.”  Steve couldn’t help but suck in a breath in relief at Hill’s voice.  “Something interfered with the launch command to Charlie carrier.  It’s still running through the sequence.”

That explained why one of the carriers was still inside the bay.  “Two out of three ain’t bad,” Sam muttered.

“We’re still a go for all three carriers.  They’ll reboot Charlie carrier, and when they do, that ship will go up,” Hill declared.

“How does this affect the time table?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know yet.  Doesn’t matter.  If any one of those ships reaches three thousand feet–”

“Right.  Tony?” Steve called.

Stark was quick, and across the river Iron Man shot up into the blue sky, a screaming glint of red.  He’d been hiding away from SHIELD, keeping his distance in case they needed the element of surprise until it became necessary for him to intervene.  That would be about right now.  “On it.”

“Sam?” Steve said, glancing to his right.

Sam drew a deep breath, the EXO FALCON suit strapped tightly across the green t-shirt he wore.  Red goggles rested across his brow.  He grabbed them and pulled them down over his eyes.  “Ready.  How about you?”

Steve pulled his shield and slid it onto his right arm.  His sore muscles protested but he ignored it.  So did his injured left leg and tender chest and abdomen and aching head, but he ignored it all.  He could do this.  He thought of Natasha, and it was all he could do to stay strong.  _He had to do this._   “Ready.  I’ll take the one still docked.”

“Makes sense.  I’ll get you down there.”  The suit on Sam’s back expanded, metal wings that were light and flexible yet strong extending in a blink.  Normally Steve would have argued and just jumped, but he didn’t think his body could stand the fall or the impact so he said nothing as Sam activated the jet packs in the suit and propelled into the sky.  Steve reached up a gloved hand and Sam grabbed him, lifting him straight from the yard outside the Triskelion and down into the Insight Bay through the open days where the Alpha carrier had been.  Sam let Steve drop the last twenty feet or so, and he landed with a roll deep underground.  A few huge strides and a leap had him safely behind some crates.  “Hey, Cap,” Sam said as he flew away, “how do we tell the good guys from the bad?”

Above the thunder of firing guns began to rattle through the air, and Steve caught a glimpse of Iron Man zooming away, the wink of bullets and missiles following him.  A few quinjets careened after him as well, their guns blazing.  “If they’re shooting at you, they’re bad,” he answered through the comm link.

“I can confirm that,” Tony answered a little tightly.  Steve lost sight of him as he shot around the other side of the rising Alpha carrier.  The shadow from the humongous ship plunged a great deal of the bay into even deeper darkness.  “I got a slew of assholes on my six.  Falcon?”

“I’m on it.”

Steve turned his attention from the furious firefight occurring overhead to his own mission.  Charlie carrier was across the bay a good half a mile or so.  Its engines were still dark, but he needed to move and move now.  He got his feet under him, collecting his wits and gathering his composure.  It looked like a war had gone on down here, the bodies of those who’d stood against the Insight crew strewn across the concrete floor.  And his arrival had already been noticed.  The crates he was using for cover became littered with bullets.  Steve waited for a lull in the fire before gripping his shield tighter and sprinting out.  Gunfire uselessly slammed against the vibranium, and he gritted his teeth and surged forward, the shield protecting his head and upper body.  Dismayed, the soldiers backed away from him.  Steve darted to another pile of supplies, flinging his shield and hitting two of his attackers.  They fell with cries.  Another soldier was right there, coming at him with his gun raised, but Steve snatched the rifle and tossed it aside before landing a mighty kick in the man’s face.  He slammed back into the adjacent crates with a crunch.  Steve plucked a grenade from his combat vest.  He flicked the pin loose and tossed it at the group of soldiers trying to punch enough holes in the crates between them and their target to shoot through them.  The explosion came a second later, and the men fell back, dead or screaming.

Steve wasted no time.  He ran again, charging across the concrete floor of the bay.  He twisted in his path, leaping up and jumping from crate to crate, rolling agilely over the top of a third to land gracefully in front of the next group of soldiers.  He dispensed with them handily, slamming his shield into the lead guy to throw him back into his buddies.  He kicked at another, breaking bones and sending the soldier flying, before driving his fist into the third.  Another slew charged at him, shooting, but he was faster, using his shield to protect himself as he attacked.  He cut this group down as well, trying not to think or feel, losing himself in the concentration of the fight.  That kept the pain away.  And the fear.  Mostly.

“Stark!  Holy shit!  Break off!” came Sam’s horrified shout in his ear.

“These bastards mean business,” Tony said breathlessly.

“You think?” Sam sharply retorted.  “Coming around!”

“You guys okay?” Steve asked as he paused, waiting for his shield to arc back into his hands.

“Not dead yet,” Sam returned, and that didn’t exactly make Steve feel any better.  There were enough guns on these helicarriers ( _big_ guns), not to mention a flight deck loaded with quinjets and fighter jets, to wage a full-scale war against a sizeable army.  They were three Avengers against all of SHIELD.  This was insane.  He couldn’t get a clear view of the fight in the sky, but he forced himself not to worry.  _Focus.  Do your part._

“Ten minutes,” Hill said over the comm link.

He was about halfway across the Insight Bay.  “Roger that,” he said, pushing more speed out of his body.  Another wall of soldiers greeted him, rifles raised and aimed.  They didn’t even bother warning him to stop, opening fire without hesitation.  Steve rolled to the right, curling behind his shield as he scrambled for protection behind some sort of gas container.  The huge metal drum had likely been used to fuel the jets on the helicarriers.  Bullets slammed into the other side of it.  Terror jolted through Steve, so he rammed his shoulder into it as hard as he could.  The impact was enough to send it rolling, and it exploded not a second later.  The force of it threw Steve back, and he collided with a truck behind him.  His back and chest exploded in pain, and the world dimmed for an endless eternity.  But he snapped back to it.  Things and people were burning.  Someone was yelling in his ear.  “Cap!  Steve!  Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” he raggedly answered, clumsily getting to his feet.  His left leg failed him and he went back down, struggling to get control of his breathing.  His entire form was shaking, suffering with pain.  The heat from the fire consuming the scene in front of him was overwhelming, and he squinted blearily for a moment.

Hill’s voice was desperate in his ear.  “They’re bypassing the launch sequence on the Charlie carrier.”  His brain was so rattled that that made no sense for a second.  “Are you aboard?  Cap?”  He struggled to focus, unconsciousness grabbing at him and hauling him down.  “Cap!  Do you copy?  The third carrier’s going up!  If you’re not on it, you need to get on it!  Hurry!”

“Copy,” he gasped.  _Go.  Keep going._   He got his feet back under him and ran, ran as fast as he could.  The noise from the fire and the fight above him was thunderous, so loud he couldn’t even hear the pounding of his own heart as it struggled to feed his body the blood and oxygen it needed.  But he heard the engines of the third helicarrier firing up.  _No._   Blue light, fluorescent and bright, shot down from the repulsors in the engine wells.  There was still equipment around the ship, cranes and the moorings and gangways, and they were broken, set ablaze by the sudden burst of energy, and knocked aside.  The helicarrier was taking off.  _No!_

Steve ran like the wind.  He plowed through any resistance, throwing men aside, racing and leaping and pumping, _pumping_.  Ahead there was another loading crane, a taller one, and if he could climb it fast enough he might be able to jump aboard.  He slipped his shield onto his back and vaulted onto it, his hands capably finding holds as he rapidly scaled the structure.  The helicarrier was rising before him, _faster_ than him, and if he didn’t get onto it…  _Not an option._   He reached the top of the crane, where the long arm ran perpendicular to the neck, and he ran down its length.  It wasn’t more than a few inches wide, but his boots fell exactly where they needed to so he could increase his speed while maintaining his balance.  There were a few times where his left knee buckled or his hurt stomach muscles refused to function properly, and in those few long, _terrifying_ seconds he thought for sure he was going to fall.  He didn’t.

The helicarrier was a blur of gray and shadow in front of him.  It would only be a matter of seconds before it was gone.  He wasn’t close enough yet.  His boot nearly slipped, and he wasted time regaining his balance, staggering forward and grasping the cool metal of the crane arm behind him.  The helicarrier was nearly past him now.  _Oh, no, you don’t!_

Steve braced himself before jumping as far and as high as he could.  He wasn’t going to make it.  Fear rushed over him, the world slowing down sharply around him.  Every thought was siphoned from his head by his panic.  His arms and legs pin-wheeled, desperate, like clawing and kicking through the air could somehow make him move faster or farther.  Apparently it did, or he was just damn lucky to have jumped _exactly_ when he had, because his upper body slammed into the edge of the flight deck, right near a chain railing.  His brain barely functioned, running on instinct more than coherent thought, but he still managed to grab a hold of the chain and keep it.  His fall was stopped violently, and the pain stabbing up his tender abdomen and chest to his damaged arms was nearly enough to make him let go.  But, again, he didn’t.  And he hauled himself up onto the thick, cool concrete of the flight deck and rolled wearily to safety.

The helicarrier vibrated under him as it started to clear the bay.  “Cap!” Sam yelled in his ear.  He looked up and saw smoke filling the air above him.  Saw the other two helicarriers hundreds of feet in the air, their guns firing in puffs of black at Falcon and Iron Man as the two of them tried to get close enough to infiltrate the ships and reach their server rooms.  “Cap!  You okay?  Are you on board?”

The crackle of gunfire snapped Steve into awareness.  He forced himself to move.  HYDRA was coming for him, attacking, racing across the deck with guns and grenades, and there was no time to waste.  He managed to swallow the strained thudding of his heart down from his throat as he rolled to his knees.  “Yeah,” he croaked.  “Yeah!  I’m here!”

“You have seven minutes!” Hill announced.  “Falcon!  Iron Man!  What’s your status?”

“We’re getting hammered up here!”

The huge guns on the Charlie helicarrier’s deck fired upward, aiming at the tiny specks that were the other Avengers.  “Can’t get close enough to do a damn thing!” Sam shouted in frustration.

“Come from beneath!” Steve suggested.

“We would if you could get those goddamn guns off of us!” Tony snapped.  Steve squinted, catching sight of Iron Man blasting a quinjet as he tried to get at the belly of the Alpha carrier.  The server rooms were exposed, accessible from beneath, but there was no way the two of them could do this with Steve’s helicarrier shooting directly up at them.

Seven minutes, and he had to take out as many of the helicarrier’s guns as he could first _before_ he could even attempt to get to the server room.  There wasn’t time to consider the probability of failure or how damn crazy this was.  He pulled his shield from his back and charged into the fray.

* * *

Natasha had to move fast.  Through the huge bay windows of the World Security Council chamber, she could see the helicarriers rising from the Potomac and ascending into the sky.  Two of them were high above the third, which was only now struggling upward from its berth.  The duo of ships aloft was wreathed in smoke, black, oily plumes that were exiting the ships’ massive guns as they fired upon Sam and Tony.  She could barely trace her comrades’ erratic flight around the huge ships, numerous quinjets chasing them.  She forced herself to look away, trying not to think and not to worry about the others.  About Steve.

“What are you doing?” Councilman Yen asked from where he held a gun on Pierce.

Natasha’s deft fingers flew across the keyboard at the podium of the council chamber.  The huge screen behind her was scrolling through her attempts to get inside SHIELD’s mainframe.  Her access codes had of course been disabled, but Stark had had a way or two to defeat the failsafes built into the computer system.  She’d put the USB drive he’d given her into the port on the computer, and it was guiding her hack with expert ease.  Pierce looked a bit miffed as he explained.  “She’s disabling the security protocols.  Dumping all of the secrets onto the internet.”

“Including HYDRA’s,” Natasha softly reminded him, angered at the smug calmness of his voice.

Pierce had his hands raised, but he didn’t seem at all concerned that he was the one being held prisoner now.  “And SHIELD’s.”  Natasha paused a moment, looking up at the Secretary.  He gave a small, confident, _knowing_ grin.  “SHIELD has protected you, Agent Romanoff.  If you do this, none of your past is going to remain hidden.  _None_ of it.  The KGB.  The role you played in the Sao Paolo fire.  Countless assassinations.  Murder and espionage.  And let’s not forget.”  He took a bold step closer.  “The fact that you shot Captain America.”

Her fingers came to a stop.  Pierce seemed satisfied that he’d gotten under her skin, not making any effort to hide it now.  “If you were concerned about what your fellow agents would think of you sharing a bed with Rogers after what you did to him, imagine how the world will feel.  It’s all there on the mainframe.  The mission reports from Crimea.  The eye witness accounts.  You slept with him, used him, and then tried to kill him.  It’s _documented._ Maybe he’s forgiven you, but do you think anyone else will?  Do you really want that?  Are you sure you’re ready for the world to see you as you really are?”

Her heart steadied in her chest.  “Are you?”

“You’re a fool,” Pierce sneered, angered that his taunting hadn’t cracked her resolve enough for her to stop.  Nothing would make her stop.  Steve wanted SHIELD taken down.  She was going to do everything she could to see that happen.  And then she was going to put a bullet in Pierce’s skull.  The old man got control of his emotions quickly.  He glanced at his cell phone where it rested on the table beside the champagne.  “You do know that disabling the encryption is an executive order.  It requires two Alpha Level members.”

“Don’t worry,” she said.  “Company’s coming.”

Company was actually right on time.  She could hear the beating of rotors growing steadily louder, and a moment later, the black helicopter set down gently on the pad outside the council chamber at the top of the Triskelion.  Pierce turned, visibly surprised, as the chopper powered down.  The door of it opened, and out stepped Fury.  He was dressed in his customary black slacks and shirt with the black leather long coat fluttering at his heels.  His arm was still in a sling, and his face was still marked with the injuries he sustained.  But he walked without a limp, striding proudly and purposefully through the glass doors and into the council chamber.  Natasha watched him come closer, his scowl vengeful and angry, and she couldn’t help but feel slightly relieved.

Pierce looked surprised and alarmed for a beat, but he set his hands to his hips, chewed his lower lip, and nodded as though he was accepting the fact that he had been played.  Fury glared, his eye narrowed in hatred.  His old friend managed a cocky smile.  “Did you get my flowers?”  Natasha watched the exchange a moment more before unfolding her arms from her chest and going back to work, diligently preparing the system to accept clearance to override all of the security provisions.  “Actually,” Pierce said, “I’m glad you’re here, Nick.”

“Really.”  Fury’s voice was tense.  “Because I thought _you_ had me killed.”

“You know how the game works,” Pierce responded.  “It’s asset management.  The minute you got suspicious, you became a liability.”

“You knew I would _never_ go along with this,” Fury hissed.  “Never.  So why the hell did you make me head of SHIELD?”

“There’s that old saying, isn’t there?  Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”  That bullshit wasn’t enough to placate Fury, even if it was true.  He stood in front of Pierce, dark and obstinate, waiting for a better explanation.  Pierce sighed softly.  “I wanted you because you’re the best.  You’re the most ruthless person I’ve ever met.  You were never afraid to get your hands dirty, to do whatever it took to get the job done.”

“I did what I did to protect people,” Fury retorted.

“That’s how it starts, isn’t it.”  It wasn’t a question.  “That’s what you tell yourself, the way you can justify doing just a little evil to accomplish a greater good.  Maybe if it hadn’t been for your… faith in the Avengers, you would have kept on believing it.  You would’ve kept your eyes shut.  But Captain Rogers got his hands into too many things around here.  He corrupted you.  Her.”  Pierce tipped his head back at Natasha.  “He made you see the truth.  And that sealed your fate.  And his.  Today is the day that HYDRA finally wins the war.”

Fury hissed, “I don’t think so.  There’s still enough left of SHIELD to stop you.”

“You think there was ever _any part_ of SHIELD that was pure?  That believed in peace and security and diplomacy?  Diplomacy is nothing.  It’s a holding action.  A band-aid you’re trying to slap over a wound that’s causing you to bleed to death.  And you know where I learned that.  Bogota.”  Fury’s face softened slightly.  “You didn’t ask.  You just did what needed to be done.  If you think you aren’t responsible for what SHIELD has become, you’re deluding yourself.”  Pierce shook his head.  “I can bring order to the lives of seven billion people by sacrificing twenty million.”  He grunted a little chuckle.  “Even Rogers couldn’t deny the logic in that.”

“Was that before or after you tortured him half to death?”

Pierce smiled thinly.  Natasha could hardly stand it.  “You’re still deluding yourself, Nick.  This is the next step if you have the courage to take it.”

“No,” Fury said tightly.  He grabbed Pierce by the arm and dragged him less than gently to the main computer display.  “I have the courage not to.”  Natasha activated the retinal scanner program, and the computer’s feminine voice announced it was ready.  She grabbed her gun and pointed it at Pierce, leveling it at his temple, as Fury pushed him in front of the biometric scanners.

Pierce laughed, but it was an uncomfortable one.  “What, you don’t think we’ve wiped your clearance from the system?”

“I know you erased my password,” Fury said in irritation.  “Probably deleted my retinal scan.  But if you want to stay ahead of me, Mr. Secretary…”  He grabbed his eye patch and slid it to the side, revealing his face.  Natasha had never seen it before.  His left eye was white, rheumy, the skin around it lined with damage.  A huge scar went diagonally across his eye socket from his brow to his cheekbone.  “You need to keep _both_ eyes open.”  He turned back to the scanner, and Pierce had no choice but to follow suit.

The computer scanned Fury’s damaged eye and Pierce.  “Alpha Level, confirmed,” it announced.  “Encryption code accepted.  Safeguards removed.”  The main display came to life again, the bright red words declaring “ACCESS RESTRICED” falling away as exobytes of data was flushed from SHIELD’s huge archives and onto the internet.  Stark’s algorithm worked efficiently, pulling secret upon secret from the shadows and spreading it into the ether of cyberspace like wildfire.  A few seconds later, pale blue letters flashed across the display reading “TRANSFER COMPLETE”.

“Done,” Natasha said.  She drew a deep breath.  There was no going back now.  Who she had been, who she was…  All of her secrets had gone down with SHIELD.  She felt strangely liberated but terrified as well.  Her fingers shook despite herself as she reached for her cellphone in the blazer pocket of the blue business suit she wore.  She keyed into the top social networking and news sites.  “And it’s trending.”

The computer display suddenly shattered into a million glittering shards of glass.  Natasha ducked instinctively, taking refuge and tucking into herself to protect her vulnerable body against the razor-sharp rain.  The loud crash was followed by a thunderous crack.  A rifle resounded, and Councilman Yen fell to the ground, shot between the eyes.  A breath later, Singh and Rockwell went down, too.  Before the glass had even settled on the floor, all three men were dead.

Natasha’s horror left her shaking, and she whirled, clambering to her feet, but it was too late.  The Winter Soldier was there, and his metal arm grabbed her wrist.  He twisted it, and pain jolted up to her shoulder.  The gun fell from her limp fingers.  His flesh and blood hand grabbed her around the neck and tossed her bodily across the room.  She hit the polished marble hard.  The wind was knocked from her lungs as she skidded and rolled.  She quickly regained her senses and scrambled to her hands and knees.

There was already a gun in her face.  Barnes looked down on her, his eyes hard but empty, his expression taut with a murderous scowl.  “Don’t,” Pierce warned from behind them.  Natasha tore her watery eyes away from the Winter Soldier to see Pierce pointing the gun she’d dropped at Fury.  Fury raised his hand.  The Secretary came closer to him, searching the long leather coat to find and remove Fury’s weapons.  He tossed them to the floor far from them both.  “Don’t kill her yet.”  Pierce grabbed Fury and shoved him toward Natasha.  “Don’t kill either of them.”

The Winter Soldier backed off, the tension slightly leaving his form.  Natasha glanced at Fury, but the Director was as helpless as she was.  “On your knees, Nick,” Pierce ordered, waving the gun at them.  Fury grimaced but got himself down next to Natasha.  The Secretary smirked, standing next to the Winter Soldier.  “Nice timing,” he remarked.  A master praising his goddamn attack dog.

Barnes said nothing.  He stared down at Natasha, stared at her like he was seeing something when he looked at her.  Recognition.  Understanding.  _Something_.  But she couldn’t make sense of it, and whatever it was, it wasn’t enough to pierce the hell of whatever HYDRA had done to him.

“You two are going to watch your world come crashing down,” Pierce remarked, looking out the massive windows to the fight raging beyond.  He seemed intensely pleased with that.

“No.”  Natasha heard herself speak.  _Captain America is here._ “Rogers is going to stop you.  You didn’t break him.  You’ll _never_ break him.”

Pierce actually laughed.  “You really don’t get it, do you?”  He glanced at Barnes.  “Change of assignment.  I want you to go down there and find Captain America.”  Natasha’s blood turned to ice water in her veins, though it didn’t matter much because her heart _just stopped beating._   “Your last encounter with him left him injured; he should be easy to defeat.  Kill him this time.”

“No.”  She was saying it, shouting it, before her mind had even really registered what Pierce was ordering the Winter Soldier to do.  “No!  Don’t!”

Fury closed his eye and looked down in angry defeat.  “You son of a bitch.”

“Bring his shield back here so Agent Romanoff can see the job is done,” Pierce said, staring down on Natasha with cruel eyes.  He chuckled.  “She can keep it as a reminder of how much love costs for the next time she sets her sights on something she can’t have.”

“Fuck you,” she snapped, tears burning her eyes.

“There are no prisoners with HYDRA,” Pierce reminded.  His analytical eyes turned disturbingly hungry.  “But for you, Black Widow, I think we’ll make an exception.”  He smiled toothily.  Natasha felt terror sink into the pit of her stomach like a ton of bricks.  Nausea burned in the back of her throat.  “You’re an asset I’d like to reclaim.”

“Never,” Natasha lowly swore.

The corner of Pierce’s mouth curled up into that disgusting, conceited grin he had.  “Corruptible.”  Natasha’s breath hitched in her throat, terrified beyond rational thought of what they’d do to her to force her back into their midst.  _Again._   They’d already turned an innocent man against someone he’d loved like a brother with their reprogramming.  They’d do the same to her, and there’d be no one to save her this time.  _No one._

Because Steve would be gone.  _Dead._

Today was the day HYDRA would finally win the war. 

The Winter Soldier was still staring at her like he was trying to think.  “You have your orders,” Pierce reminded him.  That prompted the assassin into motion.  He slid his gun back into his holster and turned away.  Natasha’s heart lurched in desperation, in sheer panic, because if Barnes went after Steve, she didn’t think Steve would fight him, let alone kill him.  He hadn’t been able to kill Alexei, and Alexei hadn’t been his closest childhood friend turned into his enemy.  As injured and compromised as Steve was, the fight would be lost before it even started.  Steve would die.

And their mission would fail.  At least one of the helicarriers would reach three thousand feet, link with the Insight satellites, and the world would fall to its knees in front of HYDRA.

“Barnes!  James Barnes!”  Her voice was rough with panic.  She scrambled forward on the floor, even with Pierce’s gun on her.  Terror pumped through her body and desperation pounded in the very core of her.  _“Bucky!”_

The Winter Soldier _jerked_.  It was hardly anything, barely perceptible, but she knew it because there were ways she knew _him._   There had been that one night, years ago in Moscow, where she had pierced the programming and gotten through to the man beneath it.  Those dark eyes.  Hungry lips.  Hands that still had _tenderness_ to them despite all the violence they’d wrought.  “You know him,” Natasha said with only certainty in her voice.  “You know him.  He’s your friend.  You can’t hurt him.  You can’t kill him!”

Pierce backhanded her using the gun with a surprising amount of force.  Natasha’s last word escalated into a cry, not from pain but from frustration, and she fell to her side.  Fury immediately moved, but Pierce was faster, whipping the gun back to the Director’s head.  “Don’t,” he warned.  The Secretary didn’t even turn, keeping his attention firmly on his two prisoners.  “Go.  Follow your orders.  Stop Rogers.  Finish him.  _Now._ ”

And there was nothing, _nothing_ , she could do as the Winter Soldier left to complete his mission.


	17. Chapter 17

Clint knew he was in some serious trouble.  The gunshot wound was bad, but the blood loss was _worse_ ; he was lightheaded, and the stairwell was spinning around him, a blur of shadows and red, flashing lights.  He should have bowed out, at least stopped to rest, but Rumlow had a head start on him, and wherever that bastard was headed, Clint was going to make goddamn _sure_ he didn’t get there.

His communications with the rest of the Avengers and the team were still compromised.  He had no idea what was going on outside, only that Sharon had followed his orders and called for the evacuation.  An alarm was rhythmically blaring through the Triskelion, warning its occupants to leave immediately, and he passed quite a few agents, techs, and administrative staff rushing down the stairs as he was going up.  “Get out!” he yelled at them.  “Go!  Go!”

They were too panicked to do much else than comply.  If any of them were HYDRA, they didn’t stop to kill him, so that was something of a relief.  Not much of one, though.  Clint paused to lean against a cool, cement wall, pressing his hand to the gushing hole in his side.  He’d been shot enough times before to know this wound wasn’t going to kill him quickly.  Still, he was winded, over-exerted from running up the steps and trying to ignore the pain.  He fought to catch his breath, to just take a damn minute to get control of himself.  And he didn’t exactly know where he was going, but he had a pretty good idea of where Rumlow might be headed.  The thought of him ambushing Natasha and Fury was too much to stand.  He pushed himself off the wall, wrapping both of his blood-slicked hands around his gun, and forced himself to keep going.

He barged onto the 36th floor, kicking the fire escape doors open and staggering out into the carpeted hallway.  Long rows of windows lined this floor and those above and below it, and there were the meticulously ordered rows of a cubicle farm before him.  He was on the floor for human resources.  Or accounting.  He couldn’t quite remember which.  It was abandoned.  Outside, he could see a monumental battle occurring above the Potomac.  “Holy shit,” he whispered, horrified.  Two of the helicarriers were high in the air and getting higher, hundreds if not a thousand feet aloft.  Another was below, and its guns (the ones that weren’t belching plumes of smoke and fire into the sky) were blaring, unloading artillery and missiles upward.  The damage their team had done to the huge ships was practically inconsequential.  Project: Insight was minutes away from carrying out its purpose.

“–taking heavy fire!”

“I’m with you!  Whoa!  Oh, yeah!”

“You’re pretty good at this, Falcon.”

The strained voices and laughter of Stark and Wilson blared in his ear all of the sudden, and Clint grimaced and paused.  Whatever interference there had been between him and the rest of the team had either resolved itself, or he’d gotten high enough and close enough to the exterior of the building that it wasn’t any an issue anymore.  The comm line was still full of irritating static, but at least he could hear _something_.

“Cap, get this gun off of us!”

“I’m doin’ what I can!”  Rogers sounded winded and seemed like he was in pain and doing his damnedest not to admit it.

“Six minutes,” Hill announced.

“Hill, this is Barton,” Clint said.   “Rumlow’s on the move.  Can you get me a location?”

“Stand by.”

Clint could hardly make himself do that.  He watched the fight, saw Iron Man disappear inside the belly of one of the helicarriers.  Falcon went high, spiraling, drawing fire after him.  The second helicarrier was listing slightly; one of its engines was struggling, bathed in fire and covered in smoke.  “Christ,” he whispered.

“Alpha lock!” Tony triumphantly shouted.

There was a collective breath of relief.  “One down,” Hill said tightly, not about to celebrate prematurely.  “Two to go.”

“Iron Man, need some help here!”

“On my way!”

“Maria!” Clint cried in frustration, jogging across the vacant floor.  “I need an answer!”

There was a pause.  Hill’s even voice was tinged with concern.  “He’s heading up, northwest stairwell.  He’s on the 40th floor.”

 _Shit._   Clint would never catch him, not like this.  “Stark, can you give me a lift?”

“Are you insane?”  The red and gold glint of Iron Man was out in the sky again.  “Kinda busy out here!”

Clint nearly lost his temper and wished not for the first time that they had more help.  Natasha wasn’t on comms.  There was no way to warn her, no way to help her.  “If Rumlow breaches the Council–”

“Fuck,” Tony snarled, and sure enough, Iron Man broke off from the engagement and shot toward the building.  He crossed hundreds and hundreds of feet in a blink, a half a mile or more, a sonic boom shaking the windows in front of Clint as he sped across the sky.  “Where are you?  Never mind.  I see you.  Jump out.”

Clint didn’t need to be told twice.  He shot one of the windows, shattering it, and the warm, afternoon winds burst inside the building.  He didn’t let that (or anything else) deter him as he leapt out of the building.  He fell for a breath, nothing more, before Stark caught him under the arms.  The world spun nauseatingly, and Clint clenched tight around the hardness of Stark’s armor as he jetted upward to the 41st floor.  He shot out the window before depositing Clint on the edge.  Clint’s vision blurred, consciousness being coy for an endless moment before he got his bearings.  “Whoa.  Whoa!  Barton!”

Iron Man was aghast, half of his flank covered in blood where Clint had been pressed against him.  “Don’t worry about me!” Clint snapped, gritting his teeth against the pain and vertigo.  “Go!”

Stark hesitated a moment, hovering with jets of energy shooting from his boots and palms, before offering a curt nod and shooting back off toward the fight.  “Stark!  I could use some help here!” Sam cried in the communications link.  Tony shouted some sort of response, but Clint focused on his own thundering heart as he ran across the floor to the stairwell. 

There was gunfire, men screaming, and Rumlow barking.  “I need some goddamn backup!”

“You bet you do, asshole,” Clint muttered, pulling his bow and nocking an arrow as he kicked open the double doors.  Rumlow was there, the bodies of four SHIELD agents strewn on the floor around him.  He turned in surprise, but Clint was already shooting.  His arrow hit dead center and deeply into Rumlow’s back, and the STRIKE commander yowled in pain.  Clint didn’t stop running, slamming into Rumlow and striking him across the face with his bow.  Rumlow was already recovering, punching Clint in the jaw and driving him back into the office space behind them.  Clint smashed into the wall of one of the cubicles, losing his footing and collapsing unceremoniously on his ass.  The pain in his side was excruciating, debilitating him for just long enough for Rumlow to kick his bow from his hands.  Clint grabbed for his gun, but his shot went wide.  He drove his foot up, catching the other man in the chest, and Rumlow backed away with a cry.  He fell on the arrow shaft, breaking it and lodging it deeper inside him.  But he got back up, panting in pain.  Clint rolled clumsily to his feet, blood rushing between his ears, and whirled, bringing his gun to bear.

Rumlow was right there, aiming straight at him.  They stood still for a moment, both wounded and breathing heavily with narrowed eyes and wrathful glares.  Time drained away slowly.  Neither moved.  Neither gun shook.  No one had the advantage.

Rumlow spat a bloody mouthful to the floor.  “So this is it,” he said, baring crimson teeth.  “You and I have been dancing around it for a while.”

“Sure as hell have been,” Clint returned, trying to hide how much he was shaking in pain.

“You ready?”

Clint tightened his grip on his gun.  “Yeah.  You?”

Rumlow cocked an eyebrow.  “Oh, yeah.  I did promise you you’d get yours.  I think it’s time I delivered it.”  He smiled.  “You want to dispense with the bullshit?  Come on, Barton.”  Sweat dripped in fat beads from his jawline to the floor.  “You and me.  No guns.  No knives.  A good, old-fashioned brawl.”  He grinned again, sickeningly confident despite the blood dripping down the floor behind him from his back.  “Hey, if you beat me, you can go back to Romanoff.  Lick her boots.  Beg her forgiveness.  Maybe she’ll take you back even though you fucked up her boyfriend.”

Clint was wavering a little.  _Christ, not now._   Rumlow took it as a sign his taunts were getting through.  “You gotta admit that just a little part of you _liked_ watching us kick the shit out of him.  You know what we were going to do to him before you and Pierce walked in?  You know, down in the detention block?  Huh?”  Clint did.  It made his blood boil.  He’d nearly blown his cover then and there to stop it.  He probably would have if it had gone any further.  Rumlow smiled like the sick fuck he was.  “You could’ve gotten in on it.”

“Shut the hell up,” Clint rasped.  He pulled himself together, focusing on his hatred.  On his rage.  On how much he wanted to hurt Rumlow for everything he’d done to Steve and Natasha.  For _everything_.  “Let’s do this.”  He tossed his gun, worried he was making a mistake but too furious to care.  “Unless you’re too much of a fucking coward.”

Rumlow smiled, but he was nothing if not true to form.  He threw his gun aside, too.  Better that than be labeled weaker.  And killing Clint with his bare hands was probably too alluring to pass up.  He reached behind him and yanked the remains of the arrow free with a grunt.  Then he unzipped his combat vest and tossed it, revealing a black harness underneath that crossed his chest in a large “X” in the front.  “Alright, Hawkeye.  Come on!”

Clint gritted his teeth, balled his right hand into a fist, and swung with everything he had left.

* * *

Natasha had never been so desperate to do something in her entire life.  Her mind was racing, churning through thought after thought, searching frantically for a way out.  A way to escape.  A way to get to Steve and save him.  She needed to.  She couldn’t let this happen to him.  Not again.  He’d been hurt enough – _so much_ – on the world’s behalf.  On her behalf.  And the Winter Soldier was going to ambush him.  Kill him.

She couldn’t let that happen.

Unfortunately, Pierce appeared entirely content to simply hold them there on their knees before him and _wait._   What he was waiting for wasn’t clear at first, but he kept checking his phone like an impatient teenager.  The bloody bastard was wasting time.  One minute.  Then two.  The Winter Soldier would have a huge head start on her (if she could even get free – there had to be a way!).   Through the reinforced glass of the council chamber she could hear rumbling and thudding like distant thunder, the roar of guns firing in an epic battle.  She couldn’t see what was going on, but she knew time was running out and running out quickly.

But Pierce’s aim never faltered.  It was too close for either of them to make a move.  Once or twice she looked at the dropped handgun still in Yen’s hand where he’d fallen not far from Fury or the discarded rifle laying on the floor to her left, both just out of reach.  Natasha shared a glance with Fury, but he seemed as frustrated and helpless as she was.  For a horrendously long time, she wondered which of the two of them would have to make the sacrifice, to move and be shot and likely killed so that the other could use Pierce’s moment of distraction to take him out.  At this range, there was no chance Pierce would miss.

However, just as she was about to lurch forward and make a grab for one of the weapons, Pierce lost his patience.  He pocketed his phone in poorly concealed irritation.  “Alright.  Seems like my escort has been detained.”  He gestured at Natasha with the gun.  “Up, Agent Romanoff.  You’re flying me out of here.”

“No,” she said.  No chance in hell she was going with him, helping him escape, letting him get one finger on her.  She’d kill herself before evil found its way back into her soul.  Never, _ever_ again.

Pierce had no qualms about shoving the gun closer to Fury.  The message was starkly, miserably clear.  “On your feet,” he demanded lowly, evenly.  _“Now.”_

There was no choice.  Natasha rose smoothly, unwilling to allow one more person she cared about to be hurt.  Pierce grabbed her arm, sticking the weapon into her ribs.  She stiffened, hating herself for everything, for this situation and her own damnable weaknesses and letting Steve go without kissing him goodbye and telling him she loved him…  That she was sorry…  Through the angry blur of tears of her eyes, she saw something glint on the floor.  She moved without thinking, letting loose a sob that was only half fake and crumpling from Pierce’s arms.  She fell hard to the floor, moaning and sobbing.  “Call him off,” she whined plaintively, grabbing Pierce’s slacks, _begging._   “Please!  I’ll do anything you want!  I’ll turn, I’ll fight for you…  Just please call the Winter Soldier off!  _Please!_ ”

“Get up,” Pierce ordered disdainfully, repulsed by her display.  “We’re leaving.”  When she only wailed a cry, he jabbed the gun under her chin.  _“Get up!”_   She made a show of struggling upward, but not before she grabbed the taser disk she’d seen tightly in between her index finger and thumb. 

Fury was seething, visibly grinding his teeth and suffering with his helplessness.  “You know, there was a time when I would’ve taken a bullet for you.”

Pierce nodded.  “You already did,” he said.  He took the gun from Natasha’s chin and leveled it right at Fury’s forehead.  His finger tightened on the trigger.  “And you can again.”

That one brief fraction of a second was all she had, but she took it.  There was no time to get the disk on Pierce, no time to do anything other than press it.  She did and felt the electricity jolt over her, over him, over them _both_.  He let go of her with a cry.  The world condensed with bone-jarring pain, the voltage clawing over her and seemingly ripping her apart, and she was losing consciousness, falling and falling hard.

There was a terrific bang.  Two bangs.  Three.

She blacked out.

“Romanoff?  Romanoff!”  The climb back to awareness wasn’t pleasant.  “Natasha!”

Natasha jolted awake, leaning up despite the stinging agony all over her body.  She glanced around with wide eyes, gasping.  She couldn’t have been out for more than a few seconds.  Fury was right there with her, kneeling beside with relief very open in his eye and his hand on her shoulder.  The handgun that had been in Yen’s lifeless fingers was now tight in Fury’s.  And Pierce lay beside them, shot three times in the chest.  Natasha watched in disbelief, struggling to make sense of it.  Red was poking through the powder blue of his dress shirt.  His blue eyes were glazed, empty.  His lips moved, a faint murmur of something.  “Hail, HYDRA,” he whispered.  And he died.

Natasha grabbed onto Fury’s arm, struggling to get her bearings, to force herself to rise above the echo of pain and the disorientation that was leaving her reeling.  One thought slashed into her head, and that was all she needed.  “Steve,” she whispered.  She clambered to her feet, unsteady on the heels of her pumps, but a few wavering steps had her running with grace.

“Natasha!  Natasha, wait!”

She didn’t.  She couldn’t.  She barreled to the idle helicopter, ignoring the ridiculously chaotic airborne battle raging just down the river and flinging open the door to the fuselage.  She found her bag of supplies.  Digging frantically through it, she pulled out her ear piece and communicator.  Switching the device on, she stuffed it into her ear.  “Hill?  Hill!  It’s Romanoff!  Do you copy?”

“We copy,” came Hill’s terse response.  Natasha knew her well enough to detect the fear in her tone.  Things were not going well.  “Cap, Falcon, we have four minutes.”

“Bravo lock!”  Sam’s hoarse declaration blared over the comm link.  “Two down!”

Natasha didn’t waste any time looking at the helicarriers.  She was changing, uncaring that it was broad daylight, because she was going to need to fight, and she couldn’t in a constrictive business suit.  Her uniform was familiar against her skin, granting her confidence and hope and belief that she could do this.  “Steve?  Steve, where are you?”

“Almost in,” came Steve’s response.  He sounded exhausted and pained, pushed past what he could give.  “Nat–”

“I’m hit!” Stark cried.

“Tony, are you okay?”

“Disengaging!”

 _Oh, God._ Natasha fumbled with her equipment, guns and her Widow’s Bite and more taser disks.  She had to go.  She had to get to him _now._   “Sam!  Sam, I’m going to need a ride!”

“What?”

Steve’s tense voice cut over the line.  “Natasha, what are you – stay back!  Stay out of this!”

 _No chance in hell!_ “Just come to me!  Hurry!”  There was no time to explain, not to Wilson or to Fury who was grabbing at her arm and demanding to know what she was doing.  The helicopter couldn’t get her down there fast enough.  Every second counted, and she couldn’t wait.  She was running, running to the edge of the helipad, and jumping off the Triskelion.

“Holy shit!” Sam cried, but Natasha could barely hear over the roar of wind in her ears.  She was tumbling through the air, falling faster and faster, down to the trees and concrete of the yard hundreds of feet below.  There was terror, so much of it, but she couldn’t concentrate on that.  She couldn’t concentrate on anything besides the fact that Sam was coming.  Sam would catch her.  She would get to Steve and stop the Winter Soldier.  She wasn’t going to die.  Steve needed her, and she would–

_“Natasha!”_

Sam was _there_.  He dove in, swooping low, and caught her as she was about to hit the ground.  Natasha clung to him, shaking but absolutely unwilling to even begin to acknowledge what a close call it was.  “Jesus Christ!” Sam gasped as he held her tight.  “What the hell are you doing?”

“Where’s Steve?” she cried as they hovered a few feet off the ground.  “We have to get to him.  The Winter Soldier–”

She didn’t need to say anymore.  Sam lifted her into his arms bridal style and shot across the yard, across the blur of fire and wreckage, across the river, and over the Insight Bay.  The third helicarrier was hundreds of feet in the air at this point and rising steadily.  A quinjet was blocking their advance to the flight deck.  Sam dove, avoiding the spray of the minigun.  Natasha reached along the wing of the Falcon suit for one of the Uzi submachine guns strapped there.  She pulled it free and aimed behind her at the windshield of the jet.  Bullets smashed into the impenetrable glass.  Although the damage was minimal, it dissuaded the jet enough for Sam to zoom ahead, flying low beneath the carrier and arcing upward.  Natasha swallowed the bile burning in the back of her throat, struggling to keep her stomach in place.  The jet was still chasing them, launching a slew of missiles at them.  Sam was faster, more agile, darting through the sky, weaving along the flight deck of the helicarrier.  Most of the missiles detonated uselessly against the jets still lining the deck.  One hit the tower.  The quinjet pulled up, raining gunfire down upon them anew.  “Shit!” Sam cried.  He dropped her to the deck.  Natasha landed hard, her leg flaring with pain at the impact, and rolled for some cover.  Sam hovered in front of her, shooting wildly at their pursuers.

A red shadow blotted out the sun, and a repulsor blast struck the quinjet’s right engine.  It tipped wildly, venting huge billows of smoke, before tumbling down to the river.  “You guys help the Cap,” Iron Man said firmly.  Stark’s armor was dented and scraped to all hell, but his voice was firm.  “I’ll keep these assholes busy.”

He was gone in a flash.  Natasha pulled away from the jet behind which she’d taken cover, running forward where the access point to the helicarrier’s interior was located amidships.  Sam followed her, his wings retracting into his suit.  Everywhere there was fire, damaged guns and burning planes, and the bodies of the HYDRA agents Steve had fought.  But the helicarrier was still climbing, and its lower batteries of guns were still blaring, shooting at Iron Man.  All three of the ships were.  “Three minutes,” Hill worriedly announced.  “The targeting array is coming online.”

“I’m inside!” Steve shouted.

Natasha struggled to get a breath into her lungs to shout to him, but she never got the chance.  A glint of silver shone in her left periphery, and the Winter Soldier was jumping down from somewhere above.  She had no time to react as he landed in front of her.  His boot drove into her shoulder, and she collapsed to the unforgiving concrete below.

“Natasha!” Sam cried.  He was airborne in a breath, firing his guns at the Winter Soldier.  Barnes caught a few of the bullets along his bionic arm before lithely avoiding the rest.  Natasha grimaced, scrambling to her feet.  The Winter Soldier shot some sort of grappling line from his belt, catching Sam’s right wing.  He grabbed the cable and yanked as hard as he could.  Sam howled in shock as he was pulled down from the air and slammed into the flight deck.  He tried to get up.  He wasn’t fast enough, though, and Barnes was already on him.  His metal hand gripped one of the suit’s wings, and he ripped it away.  One mighty kick to Sam’s chest was all that was needed to knock him off the helicarrier.

Natasha’s heart pumped in horror.  “Sam!  _Sam!_ ”  She scrambled away, desperate to look over the edge.  Sam was plummeting down toward the river, spinning wildly in the air.  At the last second he pulled his parachute.  Natasha didn’t have the chance to watch anymore.  The Winter Soldier was on her, slamming his foot down where she had been kneeling with enough power to crack the concrete.  She rolled agilely to her feet.  They traded blows, fast and violent, but she was no match for him.  He backed her into the helicarrier’s main tower.  There was nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.  Barnes’ empty eyes bore down on her, his unshaven face lax with _nothingness_ as he punched.  His fist narrowly missed her head, banging loudly as it rammed into the steel bulkhead behind her.  Natasha ducked, side-stepped, and tossed one of the taser disks.  It hit his metal arm, crackling as it fired, scorching the metal around his elbow.  The appendage failed for a moment, and he couldn’t get it loose from the wall.  Natasha ran.

She didn’t get very far at all.  He grabbed her hair with his other hand and hauled her close to him.  _“On moi,”_ snarled the Winter Soldier.  He threw her. 

She collided with the side of one of the quinjets dozens of feet away.  Her head smacked painfully into it, and she slumped to the ground, barely awake.  Tears seeped from her eyes and awareness bled away as she lay there, watching the Winter Soldier finally yank his arm free.  He balled it into a fist, testing it and testing it again, before running through the clouds and smoke in search of his target.  _No._  She railed against the encroaching hold of unconsciousness, but it was no use.  _No!_

He was gone, and she couldn’t catch him.

* * *

“We’re running out of time,” Hill gasped.  Steve gritted his teeth, making his way as fast as he could through the maze-like interior of the last helicarrier.  He thundered down steps, raced through the narrow corridors, plowing through HYDRA agents when they stood in his way.  Finally, _finally_ , after what felt like an eternity of fighting and running and hoping, he reached his destination.

He pushed open the door to the server room on the underside of the carrier.  It was a huge glass bowl, lined with receivers and antennas to connect to the Insight satellites.  There was a long gangway that connected the platform on which he stood to the central tower.  Inside there were the targeting blades.

Steve wasted no time on relief, sprinting across the gangway, the grating clanking underneath his boots as he did.  He reached the tower, where a console with a few lighted buttons awaited him.  He fought to catch his breath, tapping the controls and lowering the rack with the server blades.  It came down with a whir, and he snatched the one he needed to replace.  The computer chirped, and the lights on the old blade switched off.  He tossed that aside, fumbling in the pouch on his utility belt for the targeting blade Tony had reprogrammed.  Grabbing it, he reached into the rows of blades to slide it into place.  “Charlie lo–”

A gun fired, and agony arched up and down his right arm from his shoulder.  He pitched forward, losing his balance, staggering and turning and bringing his shield up to protect himself.  He had not a second to spare, the gun going off again and again, the bullets colliding with his shield.  A boot struck out and slammed into his left leg.  Steve couldn’t hold in his cry of pain, falling down onto his knees.  The empty gun was tossed, clattering down from the gangway to the bottom of the room.  He barely caught the next strike against his shield, a knife slashing at him.  It scraped loudly over the vibranium, and he pushed back with all of his strength.

Bucky staggered back into the railing of the central tower, his face tight with a mechanical scowl, his eyes _dead_.  Steve swallowed his terror, scrambling back to his feet and lunging for the server rack.  He had to get that targeting blade in there.  He had to!

But the Winter Soldier was on him again.  “No!” Steve cried as he was shoved away from the server racks and pushed back along the walkway.  “Bucky!  Bucky, goddamn it, _stop!_ ”  Bucky didn’t stop.  He was driven, unthinking and uncaring, punching and kicking and stabbing at Steve with cold and calculating precision.  Steve was laboring to keep up, his strained, battered body threatening to fail him.  “Bucky, _listen_ to me!  Please!”  He kicked Bucky away, and he slammed into the railing of the catwalk, denting it.  Bucky was back instantly, slashing at him.  The knife came so close to his face that it nicked his cheek.  His next strike Steve countered, slamming an open palm into Bucky’s solar plexus.  He staggered, but it hardly slowed him, the wicked blade flying up toward Steve’s momentarily exposed belly.  Steve blocked it just in time, and it became a contest of their strengths again, the knife dangerously scraping along the edge of his shield.  The plates lining Bucky’s metal arm closed tighter together for increased power, but the limb wasn’t functioning quite right because it faltered and Steve was able to shove him back.  Bucky lost his grip on the knife, and it, too, clattered down in the well below.

Now Bucky was blocking his way, standing in front of the server racks.  Steve struggled for his composure.  He couldn’t do this.  He couldn’t fight Bucky like this.  He couldn’t hurt him.  And he was too hurt himself.  “People are gonna die, Buck,” he rasped.  “I can’t let that happen.”  Bucky said nothing, narrowing his eyes and drawing another knife from his back.  Steve lowered his chin.  “Come on.  Please.  You don’t have to do this.  You don’t have to.  You know me, and you know I wouldn’t lie,” he said, hoping, _praying_ , with every fiber of his being that he could get through again.  _Everything_ was depending on it now, on the power of their connection.  Their friendship.  Their _brotherhood._   “You know I gotta stop this.  Please, _please_ don’t make me fight you.”

The Winter Soldier was too strong.  He crouched lower like an animal ready to pounce, slate gray eyes hungry for a kill, the knife clenched tightly in his flesh and blood fist.  Steve hardly had a chance to prepare, his weakened body stumbling back under the onslaught.  He fought to get above the pain, above the dizziness, and shoved back with all his strength.  Bucky kicked at him, and he ducked, returning a punch of his own that would have crushed most men’s skulls.  Bucky’s head snapped back, but he slashed, catching Steve across the chest.  His uniform preventing the knife from hurting him, but the close call rattled him so much that Bucky was able to grab him.  They wrestled, struggling for an advantage against each other, grunting and panting.  Eventually Bucky got the upper hand, slamming Steve to the side.  His right hand finally unclenched around the targeting blade, and it flew from his fingers and landed on to the lower level of the tower.  His shield followed, knocked loose and down.

Panicked, Steve kicked Bucky away and hauled himself over the railing.  He jumped down the dozens of feet and landed on the smooth, inclined lower platform.  Bucky was right behind him.  Steve whirled, side-stepping a powerful kick and returning one of his own that Bucky barely avoided.  Bucky hit him hard straight across the face, and Steve lost his footing, spinning through the air to land roughly on his back.  The muscles and bones of his chest and abdomen seized in agony, and for a moment it was all he could do to breathe.  He was sliding, skidding down the incline.  The targeting blade was under him somewhere, and he floundered for it and some way to stop his momentum.  He found both, planting the heels of his boots on the smooth surface to anchor himself right at the edge and sacrificing his grip on his shield to snatch the computer chip.  He rose just in time to be decked across the face, thankfully with Bucky’s human hand but it was still strong enough for him to see stars.  He grabbed Bucky’s combat uniform, driving his right knee up into the other man’s midriff as hard as he could twice.  Bucky snatched his right hand and twisted, and the damn targeting blade was knocked loose again.  Steve growled in frustration, lashing out with his foot and kicking Bucky clear off the platform.

He didn’t hesitate, jumping down after him, letting the full force of his body weight drive Bucky down into the floor.  Bucky crumpled under him, and Steve pushed him down harder before scrambling off and sprinting toward the targeting blade where it lay on the other side of the room.  Below them through the glass floor the Potomac was getting further away, smaller and smaller as the helicarrier climbed and climbed.  _Damn it,_ Steve thought, desperate as he ran as fast as he could.  There was no time.  _None._   The targeting blade was right there in front of him.  _Get it and get back up there!_

He heard the distinctive ring of his shield cutting through the air, and the next thing he knew it was hitting him hard in the back.  Steve grimaced, choking off a miserable cry, as he fell from the force.  He barely was able to turn in time, kicking his shield up and onto his arm to absorb the gunshots that followed.  When Bucky stopped shooting, Steve threw his shield at him with all of his strength.  Bucky deflected it up and away with his metal arm and charged him again.  Steve slammed his forehead into Bucky’s as they struggled, but the hits hardly slowed him.  The knife was back, coming from nowhere, and stabbing into the meat of his bicep.  Steve howled in pain, weakening enough for Bucky to shove him aside and into the adjacent wall.

Steve gritted his teeth and yanked the blade free.  Bucky was on the floor, grabbing the targeting blade.  Angry and so goddamn tired, Steve reached down and got his hand around Bucky’s throat.  He squeezed hard, hard enough to cause pain and damage, and bodily lifted the other man a good few feet off the floor.  Bucky choked, his eyes filling with tears, scrabbling to dislodge Steve’s crushing grip around his neck.  Steve gave a ragged cry of effort and slammed Bucky back down into the floor, grabbing his flesh and blood arm so tightly about the wrist he could feel the bones shift inside it as Bucky struggled.  He trapped it against his chest, pushing the flat of his palm against Bucky’s jaw and bearing all his weight down on Bucky’s back.  The targeting blade was in Bucky’s hand, squeezed so firmly that Steve was afraid it was going to break.  “Drop it!” he shouted, pushing harder on Bucky’s head and pulling painfully on his arm.  Bucky yelped, and his metal fist snapped up to hit Steve.  He missed.  “Drop it!” Steve demanded again, hoping that his friend would realize that he was helpless, that this was over, that he needed to let it go.  The pain wasn’t enough.  Gritting his teeth and hating himself, he broke Bucky’s arm.

Bucky screamed.  Steve wrestled him down.  He ended up flat on his back, Bucky squirming and writhing on top of him.  Steve got his legs around Bucky’s waist and his arm around his neck, strangling him with everything he had.  Bucky flailed, struggling wildly, grabbing at Steve’s hand with his bionic arm.  Pushing the last of his strength into it, Steve caught the metal arm and pushed it down, pushed _hard_ , and got it pinned under his thigh.  He held on, choking Bucky, gritting his teeth and hurting and furious.  He held on for what seemed like forever, Bucky flushed and wheezing and shaking.  _He held on._

Finally Bucky let go.  The targeting blade fell to the floor with a soft clatter.

The assassin lost consciousness, and Steve shoved him off.  He moved quickly, grabbing the server blade and running.  _Go._   He staggered along the wall, slipping the blade into the pouch on his hip before stumbling back to the central tower.  “One minute,” came Hill’s desperate announcement.  “They’re at three thousand feet!  The targeting grid is engaged!  The weapons array is online!”  _Go!_   He jumped, his hurt leg nearly refusing to do it, and a leap that should have been simple for him was strenuous.  He nearly missed, his bloodied, damaged shoulder locked in a useless spasm that made his right hand fall loose of the bar he grabbed.  Still, he fought, forcing his muscles to work despite the excruciating pain and crushing fatigue.  His lips curled back from his teeth as he lifted himself onto the next level up.  He got up and ran up the smooth and slippery incline.

Again there was a loud bang.  Something smacked into the back of Steve’s right thigh, and he went down.  He glanced over his shoulder and saw Bucky, standing again with his metal arm outstretched, gun smoking.  Steve felt the blood before he felt the pain, panic and adrenaline numbing his senses and pushing him onward.  He ignored it all, getting back up and jumping with everything he had to get to the platform above.  His hands curled around the grating and he pulled.  The gun fired, the bullet clipping his side and slamming into the metal of the tower.  Steve lifted himself, trying not to think how exposed he was, how Bucky was going to shoot him, how he was helpless to stop that as the gun fired again.  Luckily the shot only clipped his side, but it and everything else hurt horribly, and he knew he couldn’t take any more.  Not after all of this.  He was well past his limits, past what he could endure.  Still, he pulled with a desperate cry, the entirety of his body quaking with the strain, his legs mindlessly kicking for purchase.  He got himself up there, not stopping to think or feel or even breathe, rolling across the grating and crawling onto his knees.  “Thirty seconds!” Hill yelled.

“Stand by,” he gasped.  A pained groan escaped him as he hauled himself upright in front of the server rack.  He grabbed the targeting blade from his belt again.  The Winter Soldier was right below him, behind him.  Climbing.  Chasing.  The Winter Soldier was going to shoot him.

Bucky was going to kill him.

He had to do it now!

The gun went off.

There was a thud behind him that he barely heard over the roar of his heartbeat.  A soft, pained moan filled his ears, and he turned, horrified.  He hadn’t been shot.  _He hadn’t been shot._

“Oh, God,” he whispered.

Natasha was there.  Her face was white, her lips bloodless, her eyes blown wide with fear and agony.  Steve held her gaze for the longest time, not understanding, not wanting to recognize what had happened.  Seeing, but unable to make himself accept it.  Not even when he looked downward and observed the red blossoming on her front, spreading along the black leather of her uniform right below her sternum.  Spreading fast.  Dark red, glistening and growing and dripping down.

“No,” he moaned.  _No.  Oh, God, no!  No, no, no!_

She wavered but took the targeting blade from his limp fingers and slid it into the correct position.  Weakly, she raised her wrist to her mouth.  “Charlie lock.”  Then she pitched forward and fell into him.  They both went down to the floor in a heap, Natasha limp and shivering in his arms.  Time slowed to a halt.

The Winter Soldier was there behind her, and his gun moved slowly to press into Steve’s forehead.

* * *

Natasha’s weak announcement cut over the communications link.  She sounded like she was pain, terrible pain, and Clint knew instantly something was seriously wrong.  But he could hardly spare a moment to even think about it before Rumlow was on him again, shoving him back into a desk.  Clint pushed back on the surface, kicking out with both feet and catching the other man before he got closer.

“Alright, Cap, get out of there!” Hill shouted.  Clint punched Rumlow in the cheek, and the STRIKE commander staggered away.  He blinked sweat, tears, and blood from his eyes.  He could hardly stand, hardly do anything, beaten and pushed beyond what he could withstand.  _Please let this be over.  Please, God…_   “Cap?  Answer me!  Are you clear?”

“Nat’s been shot.”  The hoarse, strained gasp could not have possibly come from Captain America.  “She’s…  We’re not gonna make it.”  _No._   This wasn’t happening.  This wasn’t happening!  “Fire now,” Rogers gritted out.  His voice was rough with pain, with exhaustion, with horror and grief.

“But Steve–”

“There’s no time!  Do it!  Do it now!”

Safe in the Crow’s Nest, Maria activated Stark’s targeting algorithm.  And Clint watched in deadened, muted horror as the Insight helicarriers turned on each other.  The two that were far above the river he couldn’t see at first, but he could hear them.  The guns were booming, blasting, firing on each other and the lower helicarrier.  The lower helicarrier was shooting upward, what remained of its guns going off in quick, deadly volleys.  When the shots struck, the Triskelion vibrated and quivered with the sheer power of it.  Bursts of fire exploded along the deck of the lower ship.  Steve and Natasha were still aboard.  They were _there_ , trapped in all of that.  Dying.  Dead, even.

_Nat’s been shot._

Clint couldn’t breathe.  He hardly even noticed that Rumlow had stopped fighting him.  The STRIKE commander slowly lowered his fists, his bloodied, bruised face going lax in surprise.  The two of them did nothing but stare out the windows for an endless moment, watching as HYDRA imploded.  As the three helicarriers were destroyed.  The two that had been so far up in the sky were beginning to descend, hulking, burning masses intent on pummeling each other.  They seemed to fall in slow motion, as though held up by invisible threads being snipped one at a time.  Their decks were breaking.  Debris was crashing down into the Potomac and the still open Insight Bay.  “What a waste,” Rumlow muttered.  “Fucking waste.”

Clint wiped a hand down his face, unable to tear his eyes away.  One of the repulsor engines was completely torn off the highest carrier, and the huge chunk of wreckage tumbled into the lowest of the three, nearly ripping its aft section clean away.  He was terrified and excited and relieved all at once.  _God, help them._

He forgot that he needed help, too.  Rumlow’s momentary stasis came to an abrupt end, and he rounded on Clint without warning.  His anger was much worse now, fueled by the failure of HYDRA’s plans.  The punch sent Clint falling, his teeth gnashing the soft flesh inside his cheek.  Blood flooded his mouth.  He tripped over his feet, his wounded side pulsing in pain, and collided with another desk.  The sharp edge drove the air from his lungs, and he slumped.

Rumlow was right there, merciless, grabbing him by his vest and hauling him up only to ram his head into his.  The impact made Clint see stars.  He stumbled back, dazed, blackness dancing along the periphery of his vision.  He tried to block the next few strikes, but he was sluggish, hindered by his injuries and fear and worry.  A long shadow spread outside the Triskelion, and sunlight disappeared.  That blackness was getting closer and closer.  He was losing it.  He was losing this.  He tripped over his own feet just as Rumlow’s kick connected with his shoulder and sent him flying.  He slammed through a few of the cubicle walls, shattering glass and sending papers flying.  The carpeted floor rushed up to meet him, and he screamed in pain when something (the edge of a chair, he thought) collided with his injured flank.

Clint lay there a moment, trying to breathe through the pain.  He blinked and blinked the blurriness and darkness from his eyes.  Rumlow hopped up on the desk.  Behind him, he saw the two higher helicarriers collide.  One of them tilted and smashed downward, moving faster and faster toward the building.  _Shit._ “You’re out of your depth, Barton,” he said.  He jumped down and grabbed Clint by the vest, lifting him to his feet.  He hissed in his ear, “Weak.  Pathetic.  You always have been.  This is where you die.”

The last fire of life surged inside Clint, and he roared, elbowing Rumlow in the midriff.  That loosened Rumlow’s grip enough for Clint to throw him head over heels over his shoulder.  The other man hit the ground hard on his wounded back, and he had no time to move as Clint straddled him.  He lifted Rumlow with a fist tangled in the neck of his shirt.  “This is where _you_ die,” he seethed, slamming his fist into Rumlow’s face.  “For what you did to Steve.”  He hit him again, harder, ripping skin and breaking bone.  “For what you did to Nat!”  Blood sprayed from Rumlow’s lips as he vainly struggled.  Clint was shaking in rage.  “For what you did to me, you sick fucking bastard!”  He hit Rumlow one more time right in the face, and the other man’s head snapped back into the floor.  He went still.

Clint leaned back, breathing heavily and trembling.  He had only a second to compose himself before a low, pained whine shook the building.  He turned to the windows.  _Oh, shit._ Behind him one of the helicarriers slammed into the Triskelion.  It cut through the side of the building like a knife through warm butter, obliterating everything in its path.  Glass exploded.  Metal screamed and broke.  Clint scrambled onto his feet and ran, leaving Rumlow behind.  He didn’t stop, tearing across the floor as fast as his battered body could carry him.  “Stark!” he shouted into his wrist communicator, desperate to be heard over the deafening roar of the building being demolished behind him.  “Stark!  Need a lift again!”

“Clint, where are you?” Hill cried.

“Forty-first floor!  Northwest corner!”  That was all the breath he could spare.  He ran faster and faster, pushing all the speed he could from himself, lungs straining and heart thundering and legs pumping.

“I got it!  I got it!”  Tony’s voice was pinched.  “Stay where you are!”

Clint gasped, barely avoiding being crushed by a falling portion of the ceiling.  “Not an option!”  Outside, the helicarrier was gaining on him, its huge flight deck puncturing deep into the building and ripping a gigantic swath of it away.  The floor was _disappearing_ under his feet.  Ahead the windows wrapped around the other end of the floor.  He wasn’t going to make it.  He wasn’t going to make it!

He gave a panicked cry of effort and forced the last few huge steps out of himself.  His boots hit, once, _twice_ , and he threw himself through the glass.  He was falling, and falling _fast_ , an explosion of debris chasing him.  The green of trees and grass and the gray of cement was a blur rapidly approaching him.  But something hit him hard, knocking him violently to the right.  Iron Man.  Clint’s fingers grasped of their own accord, struggling for a grip on Stark as they rocketed lower to get beneath the descending helicarrier.  Its huge shadow swallowed them whole, and it didn’t seem like they were going to escape.

But they did.  Just barely.  “Holy shit,” Tony breathed.  “You okay?”

No, he wasn’t.  But there was no time for that.  “You gotta find Nat,” he gasped.  “You gotta go!”

“Where’s Wilson?”  That was Fury, and through the haze of smoke, pulverized cement, and ash filling the air, he saw the black helicopter racing through the sky, rising above the mess of debris falling from the side of the Triskelion into the river.  “Hill, you got a location on Falcon?”

“Negative.  He’s off comms.  He’s in the river somewhere.”

“Shit,” Fury hissed, and Tony soared upward to get away from the explosions filling the sky.  Clint blinked tears from his eyes and held tighter to Iron Man as he looked.  It was amazing and disturbing, probably the most violent destruction he’d ever seen and he’d been present for an alien invasion in New York City.  The two higher helicarriers were completely mangled together, tangled and burning and blowing up.  After clipping the Triskelion, they were quickly coming down, huge chunks of them falling into the river as they limped further away from SHIELD Headquarters.  Over the Insight Bay, the third helicarrier, the one on which Steve and Natasha were trapped, was struggling to stay in the air.  One of its engines was completely gone.  Two others were burning.  Its rear section was falling away.  It, too, was falling, sinking, down back into its berth.  “Maria, are you clear?”

“I’m clear, sir!”

“Carter?”

“Here, sir!  In the flight yard!  Most of the building’s clear!”

Clint couldn’t tear his eyes away from the third helicarrier where it was falling.  The flight deck split, more of the aft section dropping away, the ship’s innards spilling into the river as it was gutted.  An explosion on the starboard side rocked it precariously, and quinjets tumbled from the remains of the deck as it tipped.  The ship’s structural integrity was so compromised it was essentially falling apart at the seams.  It was barely above the river now.  In a matter of seconds, what was left of it would crash right down into the Insight Bay.

And Tony was flying _away_ from it.  “Go back,” Clint gasped, once he realized it.  “Go back!  We gotta do something!”

“There’s nothing,” Tony said softly, angrily.  “Nothing we can do.”

“No!  Go back, goddamn it!  They’re still alive!”

“There’s nothing we can do!” Tony snapped harshly, struggling with the finality of it himself.  They were outside the Triskelion, near the yard where a slew of SHIELD agents were standing and emergency personnel were arriving to deal with the evacuation.  A crowd of panicked, crying people were exiting the damaged building, watching with wide eyes as the third helicarrier came down, a massive, crushing, burning disaster.  As Tony set down, Clint caught a glimpse of the server room under the helicarrier.  It was still intact.  But that was all he could see in the split second he had to look.  The helicarrier slammed down into the bay with a calamitous crash that shook the ground like an earthquake.  It went in at an angle, tipping down, dragging its forward section into the bay.  The bay doors were ripped away, the sides damaged in the collision, and water from the river began to pour inside.  People were screaming.  The noise was unbearable.  The helicarrier kept sliding down with millions of tons of steel and concrete and glass.

Clint staggered, in so much goddamn pain, and fell to his knees.  Tony was beside him, his face plate flipping open, pale and bruised and horrified.  “Mr. Stark!  Stark!”  Clint vaguely recognized Sharon’s voice.  She was there in a moment, bringing with her a slew of medical personnel.  Clint choked on his breath as he felt hands on him, trying to pull him back, away, down completely to the ground so the doctors could get a look at him.  “Clint?  Clint!  Hang on.  We’ve got you.”

“GSW, right side.  He’s losing blood fast.  At least a pint.”

“Barton?”  That was Tony.  “Can you hear me?”

“Clint, squeeze my hand.”  Sharon.  “Come on.”

But he couldn’t.  Everything was fading away.  Only a thought remained.  One hope.  He’d told Steve once to make sure he took care of Natasha.  If there was any way he could, Clint knew he would.  Steve was Captain America, and he’d lived through terrible things before.  But more than that, he knew Steve loved Natasha.  He would do _anything_ to see her safe.

So he held onto that faith and to Sharon’s small, cool hand in his own even as he was forced to let everything else go.

* * *

This was it.  The end of the fight.  The end of the line.  It was over, _all over_ , and there was nothing left to do other than die.  There was no relief that they’d won, that HYDRA was defeated and the helicarriers had been destroyed.  No joy that the world was safe.  Somehow that didn’t matter as much as it should have, as it normally did.  No pride.  No calm.  No peace.  Nothing but grief and anger.  Heartache.  Anguish.  It pricked at Steve’s eyes, more painful and miserable than the acrid smoke blowing around the server room from the fires reaching inside.  The misery was inside his body like poison, and he was breathing it, suffering with it, his heart pumping it to every part of him.  The world was well and truly coming to an end, and for once he just wanted it to.

Natasha was bleeding so much.  So much.  Steve held her tight in his embrace, as tight as he could, his hand pushed firmly over the hole in her chest.  It didn’t matter, and he knew it.  There was nothing he could do this time.  No way to save her.  There was warmth all over his lap, likely draining from the entrance wound in her back.  The exit wound was pulsing under his fingers; he could feel her heart beating her life away.  Her face was ashen.  She was barely breathing, just a faint ghost of air against his hand where it was supporting her head on his thigh and pressed tenderly to her cheek.  He could barely see her, his eyes filled with tears.  She was bleeding her life away into his hands, and he couldn’t stop it.

Not that it mattered.  The Winter Soldier was still _there_ , his gun pointed right at Steve’s forehead.  “Just do it,” Steve gasped, his voice breaking, his heart shuddering in his chest.  He blinked, freeing the first hot, stinging tears, and looked up.  The Winter Soldier’s gun didn’t shake.  Didn’t move from its deadly threat.  But it didn’t fire, either.  The warm barrel was so close it was practically jabbed into Steve’s skin.  “If you’re gonna do it,” he snarled, “then do it.”  Still nothing.  He stared into Bucky’s eyes, stared and _hated_ for the first time in his life.  Truly hated someone.  There was nothing left of Bucky, _no one_ and _nothing_.  Nothing Steve could save.  Nothing he could reach.  _No one he could love._   Natasha was dying in his arms, and it was all his fault for being so weak.  So _blind._   “Do it, goddamn it!  _Do it!_ ”

For the first time in his life, he just wanted to die.  If this was his world, where his best friend, his _brother_ , came back from the dead to torture him and try to kill him, where the woman he loved bled to death in his arms while he helplessly and uselessly _watched_ …  To love so much only to have it yanked away so cruelly.  He didn’t want to fight anymore.

Something exploded.  Everything was tipping, pitching, falling apart.  But still the Winter Soldier didn’t move, and he didn’t pull the trigger.  His target was right in front of him, on his knees in submission, too hurt to fight anymore and too low and devastated to care.  He was hesitating about completing his mission.  Steve waited and waited for that gun to go off, for another of the Winter Soldier’s bullets to shatter his life, but it never came.  It never _ended._   The torture was going on and on, roaring all around them, ripping and battering and breaking them all.  Steve lost his will, sick and defeated in every sense of the word, and choked on the rough sobs climbing up his throat.  Rage and frustration, grief harsher than any he’d ever known, burned through him.  He wasn’t going to beg, but he couldn’t take this anymore.  He held Natasha closer, tighter, clinging to the last bit of warmth between them.  He closed his eyes, trying to accept it all, trying to breathe.  “Just do it,” he whispered.  “Finish it.  Please.”

Bucky threw the gun away.  “Give her to me.”

“What?”

“Now.  Give her to me.”  Steve hesitated, clenching Natasha harder.  Bucky’s eyes were tense with determination, but the ice was gone and Steve could see him again.  He dropped to a crouch in front of him, and Steve couldn’t help but flinch.  “Do you want to save her?”  Steve only nodded, shocked and terrified and panicked.  “Then give her to me.”

He couldn’t understand what was happening, what he was thinking, what he was doing, _how he could trust._   But he did.  He forced himself up, even though his body was broken and bent, and raised Natasha’s slight form to Bucky.  Bucky grabbed her, bearing most her weight with his metal arm, and something akin to grief and regret passed over his face.  A touch of amazement.  Understanding.  _Recognition._   “Come on,” he rasped.  Steve planted a bloody hand on the railing of the gangway and pushed himself forward, gritting his teeth against the agony thrumming all over him.  Wounds old and new flared alike, and it was so intense that he nearly toppled and lost consciousness.  But Bucky looked back at him, and when he did, Steve found some strength.  It was the same strength he always found when Bucky looked at him like that.  A lifetime ago in Brooklyn.  In Germany.  Right here.  He got his feet beneath him, and he ran.

The entirety of the helicarrier lurched and dropped beneath them as they charged across the gangway.  Steve hazarded looking down through the smashed floor of the server room.  Hundreds of feet below the floor of the Insight Bay was dark, filling with debris and fire and water.  The narrow walk shuddered, tipping back, and he tightened his grip on the railing to keep his balance.  Bucky reached the door ahead, trading Natasha’s weight to his other arm to wrench it open.  They both barreled through, one after the other, and they were trapped in the interior maze of the helicarrier.  They had to get out.  They had to go up.

Bucky sprinted down the long corridor, leaping over fallen debris.  Everything was quaking, contorting.  Alarms were blaring.  Things were burning.  There were bodies in the halls and rooms.  This was hell, and they were trapped in it.  “Go!” Steve cried, colliding with Bucky’s back and pushing him forward with all that remained of his strength.  Bucky turned left and then right and then left again, searching for the emergency stairwell and finally finding it.  They burst inside.  The floor shifted beneath their boots, tipping the other way, and that horrific sensation of weightlessness assailed them for a horrendous moment.  It stopped and everything steadied.  Bucky was already running up the stairs, taking them two at a time.  Steve followed, dripping blood and pushing, _pushing_ himself even though he couldn’t get enough air into his lungs and his limbs were leaden with hurt and fatigue.  They reached the top, as high as they could climb.  _Go, go, go!_

Bucky rammed the door with his shoulder, cradling Natasha close to protect her, and they burst onto the flight deck.  _Holy hell._   It was difficult to see through the smoke, but Steve could tell they were inside the Insight Bay.  The helicarrier was a blackened, writhing mass of wreckage that was barely holding itself together beneath them.  It was tipped, part of it braced against the wall of the bay that was against the Potomac, the forward section of the carrier inclined toward the sky.  The wall holding it up was crumbling, and the river was pouring down inside as it did.  The helicarrier groaned loudly, as loud as thunder, and shook as it slid and shuddered and fell apart.

They had to go _now._

Steve staggered and nearly tripped, but he didn’t fall, limping as best he could after Bucky.  The helicarrier was tilting more and more beneath them, the edge of the bay wall keeping it up but only just.  The climb was getting steeper, and Steve could hardly do it.  This time he did trip, and Bucky looked back over his shoulder at him.  He said nothing, the desperate, dark glare enough to communicate that this wasn’t it – _this isn’t the end of the line and you need to get your sorry ass up and keep fighting, Stevie_ – and Steve somehow got his feet beneath him once more and stumbled onward.  If they didn’t reach the wall where the forward section of the carrier was braced, if they didn’t get off…

 _It ain’t the end of the line, Stevie_.  Bucky’s voice laced through his hazy thoughts, pounding in time with his straining, aching heart.  _Run!_

He caught up.  The front of the helicarrier lost contact with the wall of the bay and lurched downward a good ten feet.  Steve’s stomach leapt into his throat, and he scrambled for something onto which he could hold as whatever aircraft and debris still atop the deck broke loose and tumbled around.  Terror left him reeling for a horrifically long instant, but he got himself back and kept going.  The helicarrier scraped down with a shrill, deafening whine of bending metal and breaking cement.  The front crumpled further, but something else caught it to hold it up.  Everything around them was moaning and groaning with the strain.

Ahead Bucky was at the smooth wall where the river was running down.  There was a ledge of sorts where a control room, maybe something that had been used to manage the bay doors, had once been.  It was a few feet above them and to the left.  “Come on!” Bucky hollered, and Steve scrambled closer.  It was harder now because water was running down the deck of the helicarrier, slick beneath his already unsteady feet.  “Come on!”

Steve reached him right at the port edge of the flight deck.  “You go first.  Climb up,” Bucky snapped.  He didn’t waste any time, backing up to get as much of a running start as he could manage before leaping through the air.  He caught the edge.  For a moment, his fingers locked up in a useless, pained spasm, and they were too wet with river water and blood to maintain his grasp.  But he forced himself to hold on and pull himself up.

Steve coughed, whirling and reaching down.  Bucky handed Natasha up to him, and he took her into his arms.  She was barely breathing, barely alive at all.  He was lost in that for just a moment, and when he looked back, the helicarrier abruptly shifted to the right.  Steve’s eyes went wide.  “No!” he cried, setting Natasha as far from the edge as possible.  “No!  No!  Bucky!”

Bucky ran forward as the carrier screeched downward and dropped out from under him.  It took part of the ledge with it, yanking away cement and reebars and mangled metal.  He jumped, his metal arm reaching and reaching, and Steve caught it.

The helicarrier completely fell away beneath them, tumbling down and taking part of the wall with it.  Now water poured inside in a veritable flood, rushing over them both, pulling Bucky away.  “No!” Steve shouted, reaching down as far as he could.  He lay on his stomach, glass and metal poking into his belly, sweat and water spilling into his eyes.  The sharp edge of the ledge dug into his midriff as he was dragged forward an inch or two.  The river was sucking Bucky down into the pit below and dragging Steve with it.  Fire burst up from the disintegrating ship, wreckage twisting and exploding under the flood.  “Hang on, Bucky!  Hang on!  I’ve got you!”

Bucky’s right arm was broken.  He couldn’t bend it enough to reinforce his grasp, and the ledge was buckling further.  Steve cried out as his arm was nearly wrenched from its socket again.  The pain was excruciating, but he wasn’t going to let go.  Not this time.  _Not again!_   “Bucky!”

“Get out of here,” Bucky gasped, sputtering as the water pounded him.

“No!  Not without you!”

But Bucky’s eyes were clear now, _his_ eyes, just as Steve remembered.  Just as he always had been.  “You gotta let me go, Steve,” he said.  Serene.  Accepting.  “It’s the only way!”

“No!  I won’t!  No!”  Steve tried to pull him up, tried with every ounce of strength left in him, but he couldn’t.  Not with the force of the water dragging him down.  Not with his own body failing him.  “Climb up!  _Come on!_ ”

Bucky’s arm faltered, and his fingers went limp.  He slipped an inch or two.  Steve jerked, reaching down further, and caught him around the wrist.  “Let me go,” Bucky said again.

“No!  Bucky!  _No!_ ”  Steve struggled to hang on, panicked, horrified.  _“Please…”_   Their eyes met, gray on blue, and they saw each other and everything that was between them.  The past.  This moment.  Everything they had had.  Everything they had lost.  Bucky was trying to tell Steve it didn’t matter with this one look.  Bucky was trying tell him he was sorry.  He was trying to tell him it was okay.  That if he didn’t do this, he and Natasha had no chance of escaping.  It _was_ okay.  It was.

It had to be.

_Save her.  Save her and not me, Steve._

_Save her!_

Steve let Bucky go.

The river swallowed Bucky whole, pulling him down in the flooding bay so far below, down into the dark hell of wreckage and debris.

Steve watched until he couldn’t see him anymore, shocked into a senseless stupor at what he had done.  At what he’d done _again_.  Then he looked away, shaking, struggling to breathe.  He couldn’t think or move.  He couldn’t…

_Natasha.  Save her!_

He turned as if jolted, crawling under the cascade of water and scooping Natasha’s body up.  He reached upward, scrambling for purchase against the slick and unstable wall.  He held her with his right hand, as tightly as he could, and searched for something to grab.  The water pounded at him.  _Climb_.  He had to get up.  His boots were wet, slipping and sliding, offering no traction even as he fought wildly for every inch.  He grabbed and pulled.  Lifted and reached.  He had to get her out.  She was hurt.  She was dying.  He had to get her out.  The top of the bay was right above him.  A few feet.  He had to reach it.  He had to save her.  Bucky had fallen so he could save her.  He’d let Bucky go so he could save her.  He had to get her out.  He had to do it.  _Climb!_

He couldn’t.  His hand slipped, and he lost his grip.

“Steve!”

A shadow appeared overhead, laying down over the edge of the bay door.  Steve blinked the water from his eyes, not believing what he was seeing.  It was Sam.  _Sam._   “Steve!  Hang on!  Give me your hand!”

It took everything he had left, but he got his hand back up there and slammed it into Sam’s where it was stretched down toward him.  Sam’s wonderful, strong, _firm_ fingers latched tightly around his and _pulled_.  Steve dug his boots into the crumbling debris of the wall and pushed with a cry, reaching Natasha up and over the top.  Sam was there to take her, pulling her leaden body from Steve’s trembling arm.  Steve howled in pain, getting a firmer grip and fighting.  Against the river.  Against the pain and exhaustion.  _Fight!_

With one last cry, he made it.

He coughed out a mouthful of blood and water, scrambling on top of the bay.  It was shallow here, not more than a couple of feet deep, but the river was draining into the bay behind them and pulling them back toward it.  “Nat,” he moaned, pulling her body from Sam’s arms.

“Come on!” Sam cried, grabbing Steve’s elbow and yanking him up and along as they scrambled and limped away from the river sucking them back.  Over the roar of his heart, Steve heard something beat in the air, something louder and louder.  A black helicopter circled them, dropping low and kicking spray from the river.

The rear door opened, and Hill reached out to them.  “Hurry!” she cried.

Sam splashed his way over and hauled himself inside.  Steve followed, shivering and clenching Natasha harder to keep her safely against him.  Both Sam and Maria grabbed his arms and helped him up.  He collapsed to the cold, hard floor of the chopper, cradling Natasha in his embrace.  The chopper’s rotors picked up speed, and they were rising in the air, rising away from the watery tomb of the bay.

Sam and Maria were right there, scrambling for first aid equipment as Steve laid Natasha’s limp body on the floor.  “Nat,” he cried.  He yanked his helmet off, sputtering on air that wasn’t coming fast enough, and pressed his ear to her lips.  “Nat.  Oh, God.  She’s not breathing.”  How long had she not been breathing?  How long?

“We need to get her to a hospital!” Maria shouted to Fury who was piloting ahead.  “Now!”

Steve wasn’t listening.  He swept his fingers inside Natasha’s mouth to clear her airway, pinched her nose, and tipped her head back.  He sealed his mouth over hers and delivered as big a breath as he could manage.  His shaking hand fell to her neck.  No pulse.  _No pulse._   “No, no, no…”  he whispered.  His own heart was pounding, _pounding,_ and he fumbled to unzip her uniform top.  The gunshot wound was seemingly small, but the blood still pouring from it was unbelievable.  Sam was floundering with bandages.  Hill was searching in the emergency kit for supplies, screaming at Fury.  Steve balled his hands together and found the place over Natasha’s sternum and started CPR.  He was shaking so badly, shaking and struggling to count and remember to hold his strength back and _think_ and _God, please don’t do this to me, please, please don’t take her from me, please I can’t please–_

Seconds fled.  Minutes, even.  “Steve,” Sam said softly.

“No!”  He couldn’t stand to think it.  This wasn’t happening.  She wasn’t…  _No!_   “Come on, love.  Nat, please.  _Please_ don’t do this to me.  Please!”  He breathed for her.  He compressed her chest.  He counted.  He _prayed_.  “Please, Nat.  Don’t do this to me!  _Please!”_

“Steve, she’s–”

“No!” he snapped, turning stricken, furious eyes on both Sam and Hill.  “No!”

Sam’s hand fell on his shoulder.  He shrugged it off, _dying_ inside, and looked down on Natasha.  She was still.  Her face was ashen, her lips tinged purple, her eyes sealed tightly shut.  Bruised.  Lifeless.  _No._ Steve sobbed, gently pushing his hand under her head to lift her into his arms.  He buried his face into the nape of her neck, her wet hair clinging to his skin as he held her and rocked and cried.  “Nat…  Please…  I need you.  _Please…_ ”  His voice failed him as he begged.  He held her tighter, curling in on himself and her and crying in huge, harsh gasps.  This wasn’t right.  This couldn’t be!  Pain unlike anything he’d ever felt rose up inside him, so cold, _so cold_ , and he shivered.  There was no way he could save her this time.  Nothing he could do.  No hope.  Nothing that could change the past or undo the damage.  No way to make this right.  No way to stop it.  _Nothing._

 _God, take me instead.  Don’t take her.  Don’t do this!_ He was cracking.  His heart and mind and soul.  Cracking and shattering.  _Breaking._   “I love you…” he moaned.  “Please, Nat.  Please come back!  Come back!”

There was a moan against his ear.  Soft.  Desperate.  Steve immediately leaned up, frantic, and looked down.  Her eyes were open.  Blue and green like the sea.  Deep.  Beautiful.  She drew a breath.  One.  Another.  He couldn’t believe it.  _He couldn’t believe it!_   “Nat?” he gasped, not daring to hope.  “Nat?  Look at me!”

Her lips shifted around a word.  He leaned close, as close as he could, cradling her face in his hands.  _“Ya tvoi.”_   She closed her eyes, her hand weakly reaching up to his to weave their fingers together.  The other she laid to his cheek.  _“Ya tvoi.”_

“I know,” he whispered into her lips.  He closed his eyes, too, and pressed his forehead to hers.  “I know.  I know.”

_I know._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _On moi._ – He's mine.  
>  _Ya tvoi._ – I'm yours.
> 
> Thanks to the lovely [vbprodz](http://vbprodz.tumblr.com) for some gut-wrenching artwork inspired by this chapter:


	18. Chapter 18

She was cold.  Lost in an endless plain of white.  Ice and snow.

_The terminal frost of an eternal winter._

Was this how Steve had felt when he died fighting the war, frozen and alone?

“She’s crashing again.  Somebody get the cart!”

“BP’s falling fast.  Can’t get a stable pulse.”

“Shot of epi!  Hurry!”

“No!  I gotta stay with her!  Get off me, damn it!  Let me stay with her!”

“Captain, you need to relax.  Easy.  Easy!  We need another doctor over here!”

“Steve, let her go.  Let them take her.”

A choked sob.  A ragged breath.  And what little warmth there was faded.

The plain stretched on and on, pure and perfect.  Undisturbed.  Frozen solid.  A white world under a gray sky.  Directionless.  Everywhere it was the same.  Everywhere.  An infinite stretch of pale, dull, icy _nothingness_ , and she stood in its center, turning and turning.  Spinning.  _Lost._

“Come on, Agent Romanoff.  Don’t quit on us.”

“Christ, she’s lost a lot of blood.”

“Get the OR prepped.  Right now!”

“Hang on!”

There were distant things, she saw.  They surrounded her.  Dark clouds.  A storm, fat, angry bolts of lightning raking the horizon.  It was coming closer.  This was pain.  There was something pounding like thunder, rhythmic and deafening.  Her heart.  Struggling.  Struggling to keep beating, to keep going.  So was she.  She was walking now, walking and then running, trying to find a way out.  Desperate to find a way _back_.  But her feet sank into the snow, and the wind picked up, pushing her away.  And it didn’t matter.  There was no way out.  Everything was the same, as far as she could see.  Pointless.  Directionless.  An icy wasteland of monotonous ivory, beautiful if not for the prison it really was.  Crystalline fractals clutched her legs, spreading up her body, as the storm raged closer, encasing her in a tempest of snow.  She screamed, clutching her chest in agony, and sank down into the white.  She was shivering, suffering.  She couldn’t breathe.  She was dying.

“Don’t leave me, Nat.  Please wake up.  I can’t…  Please, don’t…”

The warmth came back.

She opened her eyes, and found herself somewhere else.  Somewhere soft and safe, where the pain and the cold were far away.  The world was dark now, long, heavy shadows draped over the things in it.  Except for him.  He was somehow bright, somehow hot.  He sat at her side, his hands clasped around hers.  His head was braced on her bed.  He was shaking.  Crying.  She’d never seen him cry, not like this.  His eyes were squeezed shut in pain, great, loud sobs wracking his once strong frame.  He lifted her hand to his face, kissed her palm and her knuckles with miserable fervor, his cheek hot and wet and rough under her fingers.  She wanted to move, to touch him, to tell him she was okay.  That she was there with him and he didn’t need to grieve like this or be afraid or _hurt_ anymore.  But she couldn’t.  She was too weak, and he cried and cried until his shoulders slumped in exhaustion and there seemed to be nothing left inside him.  “I told you not to…  I told you not to do this.  Why didn’t you listen to me?  _Why?_   You’re my life.  You’re my…”  He looked up, bleary and broken.  There was so little left of him.  She was losing him as much as he was losing her.  “I love you.  I love you so much.  I can’t…  I can’t do this.  I – I…  Please.  _Please…_ ”

She couldn’t tell him how much she loved him, too.

She closed her eyes.  The warmth didn’t last.  The storm picked up and pulled her back.  There was still a world of white between them, and she was trapped in it.  But there was a way out.  She knew it in the quiet places of her heart, in her soul made so much stronger and purer because of him.  There was a road, a path.  He was right there with her, and she only needed to reach him.  She broke free and starting walking again, stronger now, determined.  She would find a way back to him.

And when she did, when she escaped this winter, they would be together.

* * *

Natasha awoke to a bright day.  At first, she couldn’t make sense of what she was seeing and hearing and feeling.  Her memories were jumbled and jagged in her head, so disoriented and out of sequence that she couldn’t figure out what had happened.  She vaguely recognized this place, this huge room in which she found herself.  She was in a soft bed dressed in expensive sheets and blankets.  Something was beeping to her left, a steady sound that she vaguely realized corresponded to the dull thudding in her chest.  There were huge windows to the right, letting in sunlight in an abundance.  She was comfortable, but she realized there was still that pain in the distance.  It was muted, but it wasn’t gone.  She knew why.  She was numb now, but she could feel the bandages around her chest underneath the blankets and sheets and a thin gown.  She could feel the tenderness of her skin beneath and between her breasts.  She’d been shot.

The Winter Soldier had shot her.

And she’d died before she’d come back.

“Hey, Nat,” came a soft, familiar voice.  She forced herself to escape her shock and focus.  There was a chair to the left of the bed, and Clint was sitting in it.  She blinked the blurriness, the ghosts of memories and nightmares, from her eyes and took stock of him.  He was dressed in black jeans and a blue shirt.  He looked haggard, his face bruised and scraped, and there was a hollowness to his eyes that betrayed how afraid and hurt he’d been.  Still was.  She wasn’t sure.  He smiled faintly.  “You awake?”

She licked her lips.  She was so weak she couldn’t even nod.  Still, she tried.  And she tried to speak, because as the clouds in her mind dissipated, a million questions began to roil and churn.  “Where am I?”

“Stark Tower.”  Clint was up and out of the chair with a wince.  She noticed he was limping pretty badly as he walked to the nightstand beside her bed.  It was cluttered with tissues and bandages and other things.  In fact, the entire room was that way, with idle medical equipment pushed aside, clothes laid here and there, blankets and pillows placed in chairs around the bed.  But she and Clint were alone.

A horrified thought burst suddenly into her brain.  “Where’s Steve?”

Clint’s face tightened with something she couldn’t read.  He was rummaging for a plastic cup, and he poured water from a bottle into it for her.  He added a straw and came closer, sliding his hand comfortingly under her neck to help her lift her head a little.  “Don’t worry.  He just stepped out for a bit.  Sam took him to eat and get cleaned up.  Probably will be pissed as all hell when he finds out you finally came around while he was gone.  Here.”  Clint got the straw in her mouth.  She sucked weakly at it.  The water was cool and pleasant, easing the pain in her dry, aching throat.

She pulled away before she was done, though, too afraid to be satisfied with that.  “Is he okay?”

Clint’s grin was not at all convincing.  “Yeah.  You know, he was a mess, but Fine patched him up again.  Serum’s doing its thing.”  He set the cup back to the table.  “He, uh…  He lost his shield.” Natasha’s eyes widened and her breath wouldn’t come.  Clint looked away sadly.  Maybe this wasn’t the most pressing issue, only metal and memories in the face of life and death, but somehow it was paramount.  “It went down with the helicarrier.  Stark’s been back to DC a few times to search for it, but he hasn’t had any luck.”  He tenderly pulled the covers up over her more securely.  She was shivering, cold to the bone and shaken to her core, and hadn’t even noticed.  Steve had lost his shield.  _Steve lost his shield._   Clint smiled feebly.  “But he’s alright.  He’s been with you the entire time.  Barely left your side.”

As dazed and numb as she was, she could still see Clint was lying to her.  Or at least not telling her the whole truth.  She thought about that dream or whatever it was, with the frozen world all around her, with Steve coming apart at her bedside.  There were other faint memories as well (at least, she thought they were memories; it was difficult to tell what was real) when she focused on them.  Steve, lying beside her, warm and firm, but his eyes dull and deadened.  Steve, sleeping in one of the chairs, his body uncharacteristically small and bent and burdened.  Steve’s hands, tight on hers with desperation of which she never imagined him capable.  Steve’s face so pale and bruised and unshaven.  Steve hurting _so badly_.  Some bit of fear or disquiet must have shown on her face, because he faltered.  “Hey, I can go get him for you, if you want.”  There was a touch of hurt in his voice, a touch of discomfort, and the harsh words of argument they’d had the last time they’d talked before the battle seemed to echo between them.  He looked away, equal parts ashamed and uncertain.  He was waiting for her to answer, clearly bothered that she didn’t want him, and when she realized that, it was almost too late.  “Really. I’ll go find him.”

“No, Clint.”  She reached for him, grabbed his hand.  His knuckles were scraped raw and split, healing but damaged and tender yet.  She looked up at him and felt… weightless.  Lost again.  She wanted him to ground her, guide her, like he always had in the past.  The anger over what he’d done to Steve, to _her_ , faded, overrun by her driving desire for his comfort.  He’d always offered it before so easily and without judgment or hesitation.  Now he seemed lost, too.  Rudderless.   Her heart throbbed with pain that had nothing to do with her wounds.  “Are you okay?”

He shrugged, and when he smiled now, it was more genuine.  “Got shot.  Again.”

“Bad?”

“Nah,” he said dismissively.  He settled himself back into the chair with enough care that she knew he was absolutely playing it down.  He still held onto her hand.  “Didn’t hit anything important.”

“How long was I…”

“About a week,” Clint answered.

“And it’s over?”

She was frightened of that answer.  But Clint nodded, and this time she knew he was being honest.  “Yeah, Nat.  It’s over.  We stopped them.  The Insight carriers were all destroyed.  HYDRA’s gone.  SHIELD’s gone, too.”

The relief she felt was overwhelming, and she nearly closed her eyes and succumbed to the pull of sleep again.  But she didn’t.  “What about…”  She couldn’t say his name.  She made herself do it.  “What about Barnes?”

Clint looked at her emptily and just shook his head.  Natasha didn’t know whether to be upset or grateful.  She settled on feeling nothing at all.  She looked away, not wanting him to see the tears in her eyes.  He did, of course.  But he respected her far too much to mention it.  “You just sleep and get better.  We almost lost you.  But you’re okay.  We’re okay.  We’re all okay.”

“Are you?” she weakly asked again.  “Are you really?”  He hesitated, his Adam’s apple bobbing as he swallowed hard.  It wasn’t like him to be so open, exposed, and vulnerable.  For the first time since this nightmare began, she made herself look and realize how _he’d_ been hurt.  What he had sacrificed.  How deep his scars ran.  Steve hadn’t been the only one who’d suffered the day in the Triskelion under Pierce’s control.  Under Rumlow’s mercy.  “Clint…  I…”  She wanted to say it.  To tell him she was sorry for abandoning him.  For accusing him and blaming him and _hating_ him for what he had done when there’d really been no other way.  She didn’t regret what she had with Steve, but she saw now that she’d hurt Clint in ways even he couldn’t admit to himself.  It wasn’t just the loss of her as a lover.  It had been the loss of her friendship, the loss of her trust and confidence.  It had been her mounting disdain for what she was because she couldn’t reconcile it with what she wanted to become.  Their lives would change now.  That was a distant concern, but it was a real one.  He didn’t say it, but the consequences of what had happened would be wide and far-spread.  SHIELD was who they were, what they knew.  And SHIELD was gone.

And she’d almost lost Clint with it.  She needed to apologize, to make this right, because he deserved better for everything he’d done for her.  However, Clint had always known her better than she knew herself sometimes.  He still did.  And he probably always would.  “Hey, it’s alright.  You don’t have to.”  He smiled at her.  “I know.”

Natasha couldn’t help her relief.  It wasn’t absolution, not for either of them.  This wasn’t simply going to go away.  Not the guilt or the grief or the anger.  But this moment heralded some understanding.  Acceptance.  Some hope that they could regain a little bit of what they’d lost.  Trust and faith in a world bereft of both.  She and Clint were the same, after all.  Dark with the things they had done in their pasts and struggling so strongly to exist in a world of right.  Damned for the evil they’d caused, for the lives they’d lived, but trying _every day_ to find redemption.  Clint was right; neither of them could ever just wipe away the red in their ledgers.  But the important thing was they were trying.  They were working _together_ to do right in a world full of wrong.  And they still needed each other.

“Sleep.”  Clint smiled, sweeping his thumbs over her knuckles.  He offered her hand a tender squeeze.  “I’ll stay around until the Cap gets back.”

“Okay.”

She closed her eyes and let the exhaustion constantly tugging at her resolve win the battle.  Clint watched her drift away.  She startled once as she slipped down, thinking for a moment that she heard Steve’s voice, but she hadn’t.  There was only Clint sitting there with her, keeping his vigil.  Still, the ghost of Steve’s whispered pleas and ragged cries haunted her as she settled down into sleep.  Even though they were all okay, that the war was over and they’d won, she couldn’t shake the feeling that the world wasn’t as bright as it seemed.

* * *

Over the next few days, Natasha recovered.  It was a slow thing.  Doctor Fine was in to see her often, taking blood, measuring her vitals, examining her, dressing and redressing the gunshot wound.  Clint was right; they’d almost lost her.  During the frantic helicopter ride from the Potomac River to the hospital.  At the hospital itself.  She’d spent a few days in something of a coma, touch and go as she teetered on the edge of death.  Fine was frankly shocked that she had survived.  The injury should have been fatal.  But she had, to his surprise and the relief of everyone, and no one seemed interested in questioning it.  The Avengers had left DC the minute she’d been stable enough to be moved, escaping what Tony had termed a “perfect shit storm”, and returned to New York.  They’d been gathered at the Tower since.  She learned all these things in bits and pieces, scraps of information she could glean from the others.  They had all come to check on her.  Maria and Sharon, each stoic and supportive.  Fury.  He’d looked at her sadly, whispering how sorry he was once when she’d barely been awake, and left.  She hadn’t seen him since.  Tony and Clint and Sam visited often, each offering sad looks but encouraging words.  They were all battered, bruised.  Beaten down and weary.  A little dazed by it all.  It seemed no one had escaped the fall of SHIELD unscathed.

Steve least of all.  He was there with her all the time, at her side _all the time_ , but he wasn’t.  His hands touched hers, held her, eased her pain and comforted her.  His lips brushed against her brow, her knuckles, hers while she drifted to and from consciousness.  He was warm and firm, a constant source of light and heat.  But he wasn’t _there._   He didn’t meet her gaze.  He didn’t smile, at least not really.  He didn’t talk beyond the barest of things.  Empty solace.  Whispers that spoke of one thing but meant something else.  She knew him too well not to see the cracks in his strength, the wounds inside that he was trying to conceal.

She ignored it at first, too caught up in her own trials.  And then, as the hours wore on to days and she started to truly get better, she just didn’t want to see it.  She didn’t want to acknowledge that he was sitting with her, but his mind was a million miles away and his eyes were hollow and listless.  She didn’t want to see those signs again, the same ones that she’d noticed after they’d rescued him from the Triskelion.  The signs that he was breaking.  _Broken already_.  Deeply devastated.  Tortured.  He managed things for her, smiles and explanations as to what was happening during her convalescence, but the life in him seemed gone.  Spent.  It became more and more undeniable.  The others had noticed, too.  Sam watched him with a perpetually worried expression pinching his face that he was making no effort to hide.  Tony tried to talk shop, insulting the government for its handling of the situation, suggesting this really was just a sign that the world had needed the Avengers all along, babbling about anything with his best attempt at his usual wit and sarcasm.  Clint was silent, observing Steve’s depression emptily and guiltily, like he was trying to parse how much of it was his fault and how much was Barnes’.  Nobody knew for sure what had happened during those final minutes of the helicarrier’s crash, exactly _how_ Steve had gotten her out as hurt as he’d been.  Obviously something had transpired between him and Barnes, but Steve offered no information, and no one dared to ask.  She wondered what it was, fearing it more and more.  He seemed genuinely happy that she was well, of course.  He was so relieved in fact that she caught him once or twice with tears in his eyes as he held her or kissed her.  Still, something dark was poisoning him.  She could see it as plain as day.  He was suffering, distant, struggling not to show it but failing miserably.  He was never very good at hiding anything from anyone, let alone from her.

Two weeks after the battle over the Potomac, she awoke to the still, unsettling gray of early dawn.  It was raining outside, a quiet summer storm vibrating over the top of the tower.  She pushed the covers off the bed.  Steve was already up, in the bathroom it seemed from the lights on down the hallway of the penthouse.  He’d come to bed late last night.  She’d been asleep when he’d walked into the suite, embroiled in some sort of hushed conversation with Sam and Tony.  Sam had been upset and agitated.  Tony had been begrudgingly offering his help.  Steve had been… _adamant_ about something, but so resigned, his posture rigid.  She’d tried to sleep as they’d quietly argued outside the door, and when the other two had left, she’d opened her eyes to see Steve standing at the window, arms folded across his chest and staring out into the stormy night.  She’d called to him, but it was like he hadn’t heard her.  Eventually he came to her.  Eventually.  And when he’d slid into bed, he’d been cold and troubled, even as she’d snuggled closer for warmth and lined his chest with soft kisses.

She swung her legs from the bed gingerly.  Her wound was better now, well on the way toward healing, but she still felt a little weak and unsteady, so much so that she was still somewhat relying on others for help moving around.  She stood, getting her bearings.  She grabbed a robe and wrapped it around herself before padding slowly down the hallway.  Her chest ached with the effort, but it was dull and not so much that she couldn’t handle it.  It felt good to be up and walking around unaided.

Sure enough, Steve was in the bathroom.  She waited in the doorway a moment, watching him.  He stood in dark jeans, a t-shirt on the counter beside him.  The thick muscles of his back rippled as he leaned into the vanity.  All signs of the horrible wounds he’d sustained at the hands of the STRIKE Team and the Winter Soldier were nearly gone, even the deepest of them reduced to faint lines and marks.  He was pale under the lights.  His head was lowered, his eyes closed.  He looked like he was in pain.  From what, she didn’t know.  _Yes, you do._   She could only deny, _delude_ herself, so much.

“You shouldn’t be out of bed,” he said.  His voice was low, quiet, but in the silence it sounded thunderous.  It rattled her core.  He raised his face and regarded her in the mirror.  He _looked_ like he always had before, tall and beautiful, pure strength and power, but he wasn’t the same.  She could see it.

Natasha found her feet beneath her, hating this distance between them and everything that was unsaid.  She slipped into the bathroom carefully, the tiles cold and smooth under her socks, and pressed herself behind him.  She kissed his back, wrapping her arms around his waist tightly.  Steve shivered a little.  The minute motion cut straight to her heart.  “It’s all okay, you know,” she said into his shoulder.  “I’m okay.”

“Nat, go back to bed.  You’re not ready to be up.”

His dismissal wasn’t quite cold.  Or desperate.  But that was how it sounded to her.  Cold and desperate and _defeated_.  She wasn’t about to be pushed aside.  She trailed her lips up his shoulder blade, tender and reverent.  “Don’t shut me out,” she whispered against his skin.  “You told me to talk to you when I was hurting.  And I did, and you were right.  It helped.  You can do the same.  Don’t shut me out.  Please.”  He shivered again, closing his eyes and melting a little under her hands like he was fighting not to let go.  Her fingers brushed over his chest, sweeping down the planes of muscles she knew so well to his stomach.  She’d forgotten how he felt, and the sensation of smooth hardness under fingertips was electrifying.  It had only been a few weeks since they’d been together, but suddenly it was all she could think about.  The last time she’d held him like this, kissing his back, touching his chest.  Making love.  Maybe that was what he needed, a moment of release, of pleasure to ease the pain.  Lord knew it had helped her in the past.  She’d often dealt with trauma this way.  She still did.  Maybe this was something she could do for him, even if she wasn’t ready for it.  She could still make him feel good.  She could still–

“I’m leaving.”

She didn’t understand for a long, awful moment.  And when she did, she couldn’t think.  It didn’t make sense.  It was like the words didn’t belong together or couldn’t have possibly have come from him.  It wasn’t real.  It wasn’t right.  _It wasn’t possible_.  Her lips moved.  A breathy question.  “What?”

He looked down again like he was ashamed and sighed.  She dropped her hands from him as if he’d physically burned her.  She stared at him in the mirror, her eyes wide with disbelief.  Steve shook his head, leaning into the vanity as if the granite was the only thing supporting him.  “I have to,” he said softly.

She still couldn’t understand.  “Why?  What are you…”  He winced.  _“Why?”_   Her voice cracked with emotion, and that got him moving.  He straightened, grabbing his shirt and walking out of the bathroom.  She was angry and frustrated as much as she was worried, and her anger strengthened and emboldened her.  She followed him as fast as she could.  “Steve, _talk_ to me!  What the hell happened on the helicarrier after I got shot?  What _happened?_ ”  He didn’t answer, standing in the bedroom.  He was rigid, stiff with pain of his own, as he stuffed his arms into his shirt and pulled it down over his head.  “This isn’t you.  This… ghost you’ve become.  It’s like you’re dead inside!  This isn’t you!”

“I know,” he said tiredly.

“Then why are you acting like this?  You told me over and over again not to swallow everything up inside and hide.  You told me to trust you, to talk to you, but here you are, hiding from me and from everything that happened!”  He winced and looked away again.  She didn’t back down.  “I can see you.  I can see it killing you.  Let me in.  Let me help you.  Please.”

“You don’t know what I did.”

Exasperated, she let her hands drop to her thighs.  “What you did?  What could you have possibly done to make you feel like this?”

He looked at her with watery eyes.  She almost lost her courage.  This wasn’t who she was, what she did.  And this wasn’t who he was.  It was the goddamn role reversal again, perturbing in a way that left her reeling.  The world was truly off-kilter, twisted and distorted so much that nothing was right, if he was this weak and she was the strong one.  And she knew in that instant that she’d lied to Pierce.  She’d lied to herself.  They really had broken him.  Down in that hell, HYDRA and SHIELD and the Winter Soldier had smashed him to pieces and left her to put him back together, only she didn’t know how.  He’d left her on Fury’s mission to the _Lemurian Star_ strong and sure of himself and beautiful and brave, and he’d come back from it all, shattered and hurt and so _lost_.  This wasn’t the Steve Rogers she knew.  This wasn’t Captain America, the man who stood strong in the face of evil, the one who fought with everything he had when others couldn’t fight for themselves.  The man who saw the best in everyone, in _her._   The man who’d made her into who she was, who’d taken all of the darkness in her heart and wiped it away, who’d loved her until she could see light and love herself.  This was someone who was falling apart before her very eyes, and she couldn’t – _wouldn’t_ – believe it.

“I have to go,” he said again, like that was somehow an explanation.

The words hurt so much.  It stirred a storm inside her, anger and grief and frustration.  She couldn’t do for him what he’d done for her after Crimea.  She didn’t know how!  “Go where?  Go and do what?”  And then she realized the truth.  She couldn’t believe how she could have been so blind.  “You’re going after him.”  _He’s not dead.  Barnes isn’t dead._

He nodded after a moment.  “Last night,” he said softly, “it was on the news down in DC.  Tony’s been tracking things after the helicarriers went down, and he found some footage of a man at the Smithsonian at the Captain America exhibit.  He was there for hours.  _Hours._   Never moving.  Never leaving.  He killed a guard when they tried to make him go and fled the scene.  They don’t know what happened to him.”

Deny.  It was all she could do.  “You don’t know that it’s him.”  She came closer, shaking her head.  She didn’t know how to feel.  Relieved.  Angry.  Horrified.  The latter two won over the former.  She didn’t care who Barnes had been or how much he meant to Steve.  _She didn’t care,_ because the man was a monster _._   “You don’t know for sure.”

He shook his head.  “Yes, I do.”  He didn’t explain anymore.  He wasn’t going to.

She didn’t know what to say.  A moment of silence crawled away.  And then another.  Her heart was pounding, and the room spun.  She was dizzy and lightheaded and covered in sweat.  “Steve–”

“I have to do this, Natasha,” he said.  He didn’t move, not even as she stepped closer to him.  He reminded her of a cornered animal, abused into submission but not so much so that it wouldn’t bite.  It was a look she knew well as she’d worn it herself often enough.  “I have to find him.  I have to bring him back.  I let him go, let him fall…  I owe him this much.”

“You don’t owe him a damn thing,” she corrected.  She didn’t mean to sound so harsh, but she couldn’t help herself.  This dawning realization was settling upon her, an understanding of what was happening.  That it _really was happening._

He was hurt, his face crinkling in anger and grief.  Betrayals layered upon betrayals.  SHIELD.  Fury.  Rumlow and Pierce.  Clint.  Barnes.  _Me._   _No._   “Yes, I do.  I owe him everything.”

She wasn’t going to be convinced.  There was _nothing_ he could say or do to convince her that that monster deserved _anything_.  Not Steve’s affection.  Not his time and effort.  Not his blood or his tears.  “No, you don’t!” she shouted.  Her anger got the better of her, her emotions raging.  Her masks failed her.  Her cool composure.  Her control.  It was all slipping away, eroding, blasted by the strength of her fear.  It _was_ her fear, most of all, because she knew what this meant, even if she couldn’t even bear to think about it.  “You don’t!  Steve, I know what he meant to you, but that man is dead now.  You can’t save him.”

“Yes, I can,” he softly insisted.  “I’m the only one who can.”

God damn his stubbornness.  “Listen to what you’re saying,” she pleaded.  “ _Listen_.  Look at what he did to you.  The serum took care of the damage on the outside, but, my God, _look_ at what he did to you!  He tortured you.”  Steve flinched, slumping in pained submission.  She wasn’t above being blunt to get through to him.  She wasn’t above hurting him to get him to stop.  “He tortured you.  He shot me!”

 _“And you shot me!”_ he shouted.  His loud voice echoed in the bedroom, echoed through the silence that followed.  The ice came back.  Ice and snow and frost, freezing her heart in her chest until it couldn’t beat and she couldn’t breathe.  His eyes were fiery.  “And I forgave you for that.  I did.  It was hard, and it _hurt_ , but I did it.  I forgave you.”

She couldn’t understand again.  She couldn’t understand what he was telling her.  The words didn’t come together.  That coldness spread over her like a disease, seeping from her heart to infect the rest of her with a chill she didn’t think she’d ever forget.  What had hurt him the most?  Her shooting him?  Her betraying him?  Him _forgiving_ her?  Had it all been a lie?  That absolution was so easily had?  His belief that she could be better than Black Widow, better than this murderer and temptress?  Had _that_ been a lie?  His faith in her?  She thought back to the night she’d come to him, to the pain on his face while she’d straddled his body and took from it what she’d needed.  _It hurt him.  Every time he made love to me, loved me, it hurt him._

And he’d _let_ her hurt him, even as he’d promised not to.  He’d put himself second, taking the hits like he always did, suffering for her sake, and she’d never realized that maybe he resented her for it.  It had taken this nightmare to bring it to the forefront, when he was too low and hurt and crushed to hide the truth anymore.  That was who he was, beset by a stubborn _refusal_ to ever let himself be anything less than the perfect soldier, the perfect hero.  To always take the hits like his body and heart and soul were just another shield but shrug off the pain and keep fighting like it was nothing.  To put himself on the line, throw himself down on the wire, _all the time_ and not give a damn about the collateral damage.  Maybe he didn’t even _see_ that he’d lied to himself.  He’d misled her with every kiss, every knowing smile and soft, unthreatening touch.  Every promise that he’d made to her.  He’d been fooling himself.  He’d been fooling them both.  There’d been a shadow looming over them, that storm in the distance, and once again they’d just ignored it.  Everything they’d shared had been predicated upon the fact that he had risen above what she had done to him, untouched, unblemished, unburdened.  Everything they had was founded on her belief that she could be good enough to be the woman he loved, this belief he’d given her and made her share.  Had this all been some dream, a fucking _fantasy?_   Who the hell was she, if he couldn’t forgive her without hurting himself?  Who did he think she was?  _Who was she?_

She still couldn’t understand.  She couldn’t think, either.  But she was feeling.  Anger.  So much goddamn anger.  So much grief.  Pain like she’d been shot again, icy agony radiating out from her chest.  “Why didn’t you ever say anything?  Why did you let me believe it was okay?”

He closed his eyes.  “Because I didn’t want to hurt you.”

“You’re hurting me now.”  He said nothing to that.  His refusal to admit it fueled her rage.  She wanted to lash out.  She wanted to hurt him again.  The spite filled her, venom in her throat and sour on her tongue.  “I saved your life.  I took a bullet meant for you.”  He flinched.  She didn’t care.  “And now _you’re_ the one who’s going to walk away.”  Her voice shook.  “You’re just going to walk out and leave me.”

“I’m not leaving you,” he returned, but his voice lacked conviction.

“Yes, you are,” she hissed, unable to keep her composure now.  It was damn well trampled.  “You are.  You’re walking out and leaving when I need you.  You’re throwing me away.”

“God, Nat, don’t do this to me,” he said.  There was an edge in his tone now, the first she’d really heard in days.  He looked at her with fever-bright eyes.  “Don’t make me choose.  I already did once, and I won’t do it again.  I _need_ to find him!”

“What do you mean, ‘you already did once’?”

He flushed and averted his gaze hotly.  “I let him fall,” he seethed, “so I could save _you_.”

She didn’t think she could take anymore.  Now she understood.  She knew his heart, how noble and pure it was.  How black and white things were to him.  So it was only logical that he was destroying himself over the guilt he was feeling.  For Natasha being shot.  For Barnes falling again.  For everything that had been done to those he loved by the evil he hadn’t stopped.  Even still, _even still_ , logic was a poor weapon against the pain and anger she felt.  “Why are you telling me this?  To make me feel bad?  To make me be grateful for his sacrifice?”

“To make you understand,” Steve said.

“I _don’t_ understand, Steve!”

“You should.  You damn well should!  How is what happened to him any different than what happened to you?  Huh?  Tell me!  Tell me why you deserve my forgiveness and he doesn’t?  I fought a madman with my back goddamn _broken_ to save you!”  She grimaced in spite of herself.  He didn’t miss it, and he lowered his tone.  Always protecting her.  _Always._   She hated him for it.  And she hated herself for being so damn petty.  So damn _jealous._   Jealous that he could care so much for someone else as to leave her now, wounded and recovering in the wake of their world crashing down around them.  “So I gotta do what I can for him.  I have to save him.  Can’t you understand that?”  His eyes were wild with tears.  She’d never imagined he could look like this.  Worn thin and brittle.  Scraped raw.  _Whittled away._   Just like Pierce had said.  “I know you love me, Nat.  I know you do.  That’s why you have to let me leave.  I _need_ to leave.”  He shook his head, and his voice dropped lower.  “I have to do this.  And I need time.”

So there was more to it, too.  More to it than just a need to find Barnes and bring him home.  More to it than some misguided crusade to save a damaged and damned friend.  “You need time?”  Her voice was weaker now, softer, because _this_ wasn’t him.  What he’d said before made sense, even if she didn’t want to believe it or admit it, because it fit with who he was.  Captain America saved people.  Captain America saw the best in people, did everything he could for those he loved.  But this…  This was doubt.  This was fear and anxiety.  “You need time?  Time to what?”  The words spilled from her mouth, hot and shaking.  “Time to figure out if you can still love me?”

“I do love you,” he softly swore.

“Then _what?_   Time to figure out if you can trust me again?”  That was what it was.  She knew it instantly.  “I told you I didn’t know!  I didn’t know Barnes was the Winter Soldier until it was too late!”

“You had a chance to tell me,” he snapped.  “You didn’t take it.”

She couldn’t believe this.  Even if she had condemned herself, she couldn’t believe that _he_ would condemn her.  She’d hoped that with distance from it all, he’d see reason.  Clearly he hadn’t.  Love created impossible situations.  Love wasn’t logical.  Love was weakness and vulnerability and pain.  Love was madness.  “You’re honestly going to do this.  The great and perfect Captain America sinking so low and being so goddamn childish as to blame me for something not in my control.  I told you the truth.  I didn’t know for sure!  And I wasn’t going to hurt you with a hunch!”

“It wasn’t a hunch.  Don’t downplay it like that.  It was the truth.  You’re too smart, too good at what you do, for it to be anything else!  It was the truth, and you knew it and you kept it from me!”

“I was trying to protect you!”

“Bullshit, Natasha!” he snapped.  “Bullshit!  You lied to me because you slept with him.”  He was losing his temper.  She’d never seen him do that, either.  “You slept with him.  And I know it was years ago.  I know it wasn’t your fault.  I know you could _never_ have known that this would get so screwed up.  That’s not the point.  You _lied to me_ to protect yourself, because you knew that it would hurt me if I found out and you didn’t want to be the one to tell me.  Don’t try to tell me different.  You slept with him!”  He was wild, unrestrained in a way that frightened her.  “I need time to figure out how I feel about that!  I need time to decide if I can get past it!  After _everything_ that happened, I can’t just take it.  I can’t.  I don’t want to.”

“Steve–”

 _“You slept with him!”_ He was lost in it.  Lost in that wintry hell, and she couldn’t reach him now.  Maybe not ever again.  He stepped closer to her, never looking away, his eyes like ice.  “And if you had had your way, you would _never_ have told me. _”_

She couldn’t argue because she wasn’t sure it wasn’t true.  There was no excuse, no defense, nothing that could just make that better.  She was shaking.  She’d never been so ashamed, so hurt.  He breathed heavily a moment more before he calmed himself.  He always calmed himself.  He closed his eyes, and the tears that had been building there the entire time slipped free as he slumped back into defeat.  It was only a few tears, but he didn’t wipe them away.  An image of him, crushed at her bedside, tracks of wetness drying untouched on his pale, unshaven cheeks, flitted across her mind until it was all she could see.  “I need time,” he explained softly, “to figure out if I can ever look at you again and not wonder what other secrets you’re keeping from me.”

She didn’t have an answer.  “This is who I am,” she whispered.  “If you can’t get past that…”

“I know.”

“How can you love someone you don’t trust?”  _How can you?  You taught me how to love, how to trust, and how can you love me if you don’t trust me?_

“I don’t know.”  He closed his eyes.  “I only know I have to do this.  I have to.  He’s all I have left.  All I have left of who I was.”

“That’s not true, Steve.”

“I lost my shield, Nat!”  He looked so miserable that part of her wanted to run to him and kiss away his tears and pain and beg his forgiveness again.  Do _anything_ to make this better.  “I lost my shield.  I lost my faith.  I lost _you_.”

She shook her head.  _“I’m right here,”_ she hissed.

After that, after he wasn’t convinced and wasn’t relieved and wasn’t comforted enough to let this go, they were silent.  Silent and forlorn, crushed under the weight of it all.  Of reality.  Of everything they’d dreamed dying around them.  Of everything they needed withering between them.  She was Black Widow.  He was Captain America.  Two opposites.  Two symbols of things radically set apart from one another.  Two hearts that had never been more different.  How could they have deluded themselves this much?  “It’s not the lies that are breaking us, Steve.”  She made herself look at him.  Really look.  She still loved him so much, but she hated him for doing this to her.  “It’s the truth.”

There was nothing more to say.  Natasha lifted her chin.  She wasn’t going to fall apart in front of him, not even when her heart was breaking as much as his.  She wouldn’t.  Not now.  She turned, limping back down the hallway toward the bathroom.  He didn’t follow her.  He didn’t help her.  She stepped inside, closing the door quietly behind her.  She stood still for a second, nothing more, before her strength failed her.  She slumped down against the door, crumpling to the floor and shivering and shivering, and then she cried.

* * *

Another week passed.  During that time, Natasha didn’t see Steve.  She existed in a haze, a cold, listless haze where colors were dull and everything was inconsequential.  Somewhere in that fog she found out from Clint that Steve, Sam, and Sharon had left New York.  They’d gone back down to DC to take care of some things.  Clint didn’t specify what, and she didn’t ask.  She didn’t care.  He knew of course that something had happened between them.  Clint was damn perceptive, and she wasn’t strong enough to hide it from him.  Aside from that long, desperate time locked in the bathroom, she hadn’t cried again.  She hadn’t _felt_ again.  She was numb, apathetic, sinking down into that place in her heart to which she’d sworn she’d never return.  _Black Widow does not love.  Black Widow does not feel._

Clint didn’t press her, though.  He was silent about it, steadfast in his support and presence, but never addressing the fact that Steve had left.  Steve had left without even saying goodbye.  The others were around.  Tony was working closely with Hill on some project.  Again, she didn’t know what, and she didn’t care to find out.  Fury was gone.  One day she had looked about the Tower, and he had disappeared like he’d never been there at all.  Clint explained once again that he had left to see to some personal matters.  The world was going on, it seemed.  There was a lot of talk, word brewing in and around the capital that Congress was about to launch a massive investigation into the fall of SHIELD.  Hundreds of people had died, including the Secretary of Defense and the majority of the World Security Council.  Billions of dollars of government property had been destroyed.  And the secrets of SHIELD and HYDRA had proliferated across the internet, seeping into the far reaches of the world and igniting a revolution of sorts.  Everywhere people were whispering, wondering, speculating.  So much had been dragged into the light.  So much, and it was impossible to put it back.

People knew everything.  _Everything_.  She still couldn’t bring herself to care.

A few days after Steve had left her, Fury summoned them all to DC.  The message came encrypted along a secure line to Tony, and he flew Natasha and Clint down in one of his private jets.  Stark Industries security was there, protecting them from the media, and they managed to escape without attracting much, if any, attention.  Fury’s coordinates led them to a small cemetery in Maryland.  It was a warm day, pleasant and peaceful as they walked along the pathways through the gravestones and trees.  The lovely weather didn’t pierce Natasha’s daze.  It was like she was _there_ , but she wasn’t.  Like Steve had been.  Her wound still troubled her some, but not enough to deter her.  Only enough to remind her of what she had lost, of how close she’d come to dying for _nothing_.  That seemed to be a common theme among their sad group of misfits.  God, she hated it.  Her own melancholy.  Everything.  Everyone.  It was a warm summer day, and she wanted it to rain, to snow, to _freeze_ because nothing should ever be warm again.

Fury stood in front of a simple grave stone.  It was odd seeing him dressed in civilian clothes, with sunglasses on rather than his customary eye patch.  He was dead in the eyes of the world, and he’d decided to stay that way.  She couldn’t help but envy him that.  He had a blank slate, a new start.  She and Clint and so many other agents of SHIELD now scattered without a home or a purpose…  They weren’t so fortunate.  The ex-Director was waiting for them, and as their small group came closer, she realized Steve and Sam were approaching from the other direction.  It was the first time she’d seen Steve since their argument.  He looked… calmer now, walking with his customary grace and purpose.  He was dressed in jeans and a white shirt with his leather bomber jacket over it.  His eyes were brightly blue, the breeze ruffling through his hair.  He was clean-shaven and well put together, a far sight from the hobbled and defeated man he’d been in New York.  He looked like Captain America again, tall and powerful.  Somehow that angered her further, even though she knew she had recovered enough to be herself as well.  Beautiful and dressed in black leather and a white blouse.  A mask, just like his, because she knew him so well that she could easily see how deeply damaged he still was.

If Fury noticed the tension between them, it wasn’t obvious.  He was talking to Steve.  “You’ve experienced this sort of thing before,” he said, gesturing to the tombstone in front of them.  It read “Colonel Nicholas J. Fury.  The path of the righteous man…”  A lonely gray rock in a pretty, quiet cemetery.  All that was left of SHIELD’s legacy.

“You get used to it,” Steve said.

Fury nodded, staring pensively at his own empty tomb for a moment, before turning to the group assembled.  “We’ve been data-mining HYDRA’s files.  Looks like a lot of rats didn’t go down with the ship.  I’m headed to Europe tonight.  I wanted to ask if any of you would come.”  His words were directed at all of them, but he was looking at Steve.  Asking Steve to join him in taking down the rest of HYDRA, wherever it was and whatever it might be planning.

Steve gazed blankly at the tombstone.  “There’s something I got to do first.”

“How about you, Wilson?” Fury said, turning to Sam.  “I could use a man of your abilities.”

Sam sighed, stuffing his hands into the pockets of his coat.  He, too, looked recovered, but his eyes were a tad haunted.  A tad worried.  “I’m more of a soldier than a spy,” he said, looking at Steve.  “And I’m going with Cap.”

Fury sighed, not pleased but not upset enough to really show it.  He turned to his two agents, the most loyal of any he’d ever had.  “Barton?  Romanoff?”

Clint glanced to Natasha.  She heard herself answer before she even thought to speak.  “I blew all my covers, sir.  I’d like some time to go figure out a new one.”  Steve stiffened.  She saw it clearly.  Part of her was glad for it.  But most of her was too numb to even be hurt.  Maybe helping Fury would have grounded her, driven her to get her feet back beneath her.  But throwing herself back into work, back into the game…  It wasn’t right anymore.  It hadn’t been since she’d fallen in love with Steve.

Clint gauged his reaction off of hers.  “I’ll lay low for a while, too.”

Tony folded his arms across his chest from Natasha’s other side.  “The Tower’s open and free as long as you two want to use it,” he offered.  “Or any of you.”  He sighed, shaking his head slightly.  “Something tells me the world’s going to need the Avengers now more than ever.  SHIELD may have been a lie, but it still protected people.  Without it, we’re going to have to do more.  Assemble as needed.”

He was right, of course.  Steve nodded.  “Whatever you think you need to get it going, Tony, do it.”

Tony smiled.  It was a softer version of his normal arrogant grin.  “Already on it, Cap.”

Steve nodded, maybe relieved.  Maybe not.  “Sorry, Nick.”

Fury didn’t seem all that upset about the lack of company on his mission.  “If all that survives of SHIELD is the Avengers, then I did something right, bringing you together.  My gift to the world, I guess.  It was worth it.  All of it.”  He nodded, pleased with how this had turned out in his own way.  Then he appraised Captain America.  Iron Man.  Black Widow and Hawkeye and Falcon.  He stretched his hand out to Steve.  “This is it then, for a while.”  Steve grabbed it and shook it firmly.  Then Sam did.  “If anyone’s looking for me, tell them they can find me right here.”

“Morbid, in a badass sort of way.”  Tony grabbed his hand as well.  “Been fun.”

With that, Fury walked away, heading back out into the world, a ghost among shadows.  Someone Natasha doubted this would be the last they’d see of him.  When he was gone, their group stood still.  Awkwardly.  The breeze pushed through the cemetery, ruffling the trees around them.  “Carter find her way home?” Clint finally asked.

Steve nodded solemnly.  “Yeah.  She was trying to get herself into the CIA.”

Clint actually smiled at that, surprise showing in his eyes for a blink.  “They’d be lucky to have her.  She’s a hell of an operative.”  The silence returned for a beat.  “What about you guys?  You ready?”

Sam shifted his weight.  “Hill was able to get us some information from the DC metro police on where they think Barnes might have gone.  We’ll start there, find out where it leads us.”

“Then we’ll see you on the flip side,” Tony said.  He reached out his hand to Steve, shaking it firmly before pulling Steve into something of a hug.  “Don’t be afraid to call if you need us.  Which, by the way, you will, because you two are goddamn morons and this is insane.”

Steve laughed a little.  “Sure, Tony.  Thanks for everything.”

Clint was next, grasping Sam’s hand and then Steve’s.  “Be careful.”

Steve nodded.  His eyes turned to Natasha, but she didn’t meet his gaze.  Looking through him, not at him.  That way she didn’t have to acknowledge his tiny flinch, the pain in his eyes.  The way his body seemed to shift uncomfortably like he wanted something he wasn’t willing or strong enough or brave enough to take.  Like he didn’t know if it was _his_ to take anymore.  Sam clasped Steve on the shoulder.  Together the two of them started to walk away.

Started to.  Steve hardly made it to the road before he was looking over his shoulder.  And he was turning, running back to them, flying past the gravestones and trees.  He was right there in front of Natasha, so close she could feel the heat of him.  So much heat.  His eyes were desperate and roving, searching hers.  He grabbed her insistently and kissed her hard.  She was surprised at first, but her heart thrummed in gratitude and so much pleasure that she wound her arms around him and pulled him tightly to her and kissed him back.  Everything fell away for this moment.  The hurtful words and shattered hopes were gone.  The frightening future.  This was powerful and passionate, stealing her breath, easing her pain.  She could taste him again.  _Feel_ him again.  And he tasted and felt like he always had.  He was hers.  He was still hers.

He pulled away, cupping her face in his hands.  He stared into her eyes, searching again, staring like he could see into her soul.  Like he was trying to tell her everything without saying anything.  It wasn’t enough.  He let her go.  _He let her go._

By the time Natasha came back to her senses, he was gone, back down across the grass to the car.  Sam was already inside.  Steve pulled open the passenger door and got in.  The engine started up, and they drove away.

It took a moment for her to breathe.  Clint’s hand found hers and squeezed gently.  “He’ll come back,” he said.

The numbness returned like it had never been gone.  Steve had left her. _Left her_.  He was walking away, going on this crazy quest to save the Winter Soldier from himself.  It was dangerous and stupid and noble and wrong and right at the same time, and she hated him for it.  “It doesn’t matter,” she murmured, turning away.  It didn’t matter.  It really didn’t.  He’d already broken his promise.

* * *

They went back to the airport.  Flew back to New York.  By now the whole country, the whole world, was alive with rumors and whispers and questions.  The public wanted answers.  Captain America had destroyed SHIELD.  The Avengers had turned on their allies.  The world wasn’t safe anymore, not that it ever had been.  The truth was out there.  People were scared, and rightly so, gathered outside Stark Tower, outside the Capitol building.  Things were changing even further.  Nothing was ever going to be the same.

Natasha wandered through it all, safely cocooned back inside herself.  Hidden under her masks.  It was surprisingly easy to find them again, to slip back into her old ways.  There was no reason to be anything other than who she was.  Clint and Tony and Hill were talking.  Plans were being made.  She didn’t listen.  She didn’t feel.  She didn’t care.  She found her way back to her suite, trying not to think.  She didn’t know what tomorrow was going to bring.  For the first time in as long as she could remember, she had no mission.  No target to kill or mark to manipulate.  No directives to fulfill.  She didn’t belong to anyone.  Not to Brushov and the Red Room.  Not to Fury and SHIELD.  Not even to Steve.  She was free in a way that was frightening but exciting, and maybe the world was more dangerous now than it ever had been before, but she was oddly relaxed and relieved.  Like the weight of it all was gone.  She’d been hurt so badly, brought so low and betrayed so completely, that the only path left would lead her up.  It had to.  What was that silly saying?  _Things can’t get any worse.  What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger._   Nonsense, but somehow comforting.  And inexplicably she thought of Peggy Carter.  _“The world has changed, and none of us can go back.  All we can do is our best, and sometimes the best we can do is to start over.”_ Peggy had written that in that letter to Steve she’d read a few weeks back.  She was right.  Natasha was liberated, able to make her own choices, to _remake_ herself.  Maybe what she’d said to Fury had actually been true.  She’d blown all her covers.  Now there was the time and the opportunity to make a new one.

That didn’t ease her completely, but it was something to fill the chilly void in her chest.  It was _something_ when she had nothing now.  No heat to ward away the ice inside.  Not really.  She breathed deeply, staring out over the New York City skyline, fighting to find some semblance of peace.  Wherever Steve was, whatever he was going to do…  She wasn’t a part of it.  She would learn to let that go.  She’d learn to let him go, because she was Black Widow.  She wasn’t tied to anyone or anything.  Not anymore.

“Miss Romanoff, Doctor Fine is at your door.  He would like to enter,” JARVIS quietly said.

Natasha had been so deeply enthralled in the emptiness of her own thoughts that she didn’t register the announcement right away.  She sighed, not terribly interested in an impromptu checkup but realizing that today had been the first day she’d really been out of the Tower and _normal_ for all intents and purposes since being shot.  Fine wanted to make sure she was okay.  She didn’t look away from the view, exhaling so completely that she sagged without the air to hold her up.  “Send him in.”

A few seconds later, he knocked at her bedroom door.  “Agent Romanoff, can I come in?”

Still, she didn’t turn.  “What is it, Doctor?”

“I need to speak with you.”  She heard him take a few steps closer into the room, the door shutting quietly behind him.  The blur of the evening lights in the city beyond looked so peaceful.  Soft and serene.  There was noise down there.  Chaos and danger and wildness, but up here, so far aloft, it couldn’t reach her.  “It’s important.”  Finally she faced hm.  Fine stood in front of her, dressed in a rumpled suit.  “I wanted to try and catch you in DC, but I must have just missed you.”

Something about the way he looked, the way he said that, piqued her concern.  She remembered then that he’d left New York a few days ago.  And obviously he’d flown up from Washington and had done so in a rush.  He wasn’t just there to check in on her.  “You could have called.”

“No, this needs to be discussed in person.”  Natasha dropped her arms from where they were crossed over her chest, waiting worriedly.  Fine drew a deep breath, pausing a moment like he was trying to figure out how to say something.  Something was wrong.  Something was very wrong.  “You’re pregnant.”

She stared at him.  She couldn’t have heard that right.  “Wh-what?”

“When I sent the hospital your bloodwork from a few days ago, they accidentally included a pregnancy test with the battery I wanted done.  It came back positive.  After I found out, I ran it myself three times.  There’s no mistake.”

“But…  But that’s not possible,” she said slowly, her voice hardly above a whisper.  Of all the possibilities she’d feared in that moment, _this_ had not been one of them.  Shock coursed over her, leaving her absolutely reeling.  “I can’t get pregnant.  The KGB – they made sure…”  Chemicals and pain and forced sterilization.  “I can’t.”

“I know.  I’m aware of your medical history.  And the trauma you endured from the injuries you sustained should have…  Well, I can’t explain it myself.  Except…”  He released a slow breath, lowering his voice even though they were alone.  “Is Captain Rogers the father?”

Dumbstruck, she nodded.  Then she understood.  _The super soldier serum._

Fine was talking, explaining, asking questions, but she wasn’t listening.  She was still, perfectly so, because she was _feeling_.  Feeling everything.  Fear.  Worry.  Doubt.  _Joy._   Part of her wanted to deny, but she knew she couldn’t.  She couldn’t because there was a life growing inside her.  A new life, against all odds.  Steve’s baby.  Her baby.  Their baby.

She was pregnant with their baby.

And now she was warm. 

**THE END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Special thanks to E, my beta-reader. Also, my heartfelt gratitude goes out to Belmene and LenaAzarova for help with the French and Russian translations. And, of course, extra special love to all of you, my faithful readers. I really appreciate all of your comments and support. You guys are amazing!
> 
> Special thanks to [mrsbarnes1o7](http://mrsbarnes1o7.tumblr.com//) for another stunning cover art:
> 
> Come find me on [tumblr](http://thegraytigress.tumblr.com)!


End file.
